In Fair Manhattan
by Courtney Belle
Summary: Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Manhattan where we lay our scene. When Bart Bass reneges on a deal he made with the Waldorf-Rose family years ago, Cyrus declares war on the Basses. Too bad Chuck and Blair can't stay away from each other.
1. Prologue

**A/N:** This idea occurred to me while I was writing chapter 30 of _Between the Shadow and the Soul_ and listening to _West Side Story_. Since there's a distinct lack of Blair/Chuck in that story, I wanted to do _something_ that actively involves them while that story plays out. So, a modern day _Romeo and Juliet_ using Chuck as Romeo and Blair as Juliet, set in Manhattan, with _Gossip Girl_ serving as a chorus. Tell me if you're interested in this concept or if it's completely the opposite of interesting. Merci beaucoup!

DISCLAIMER: This story takes characters from _Gossip Girl_ universe, created by Cecily von Ziegesar and adapted for television by the brilliant Josh Schwartz, and puts them in a modern re-telling of William Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_. I do not not own or claim to own any of the characters herein; allusions are made to the play on which this fanfiction is based, and any quotes used or altered from its text are not my intellectual property. This is a fanfiction, and I don't mean to infringe any copyrights--understand that, and I hope you enjoy the story. =] Thank you.

**House of Waldorf-Rose  
**_Cyrus Rose_ is the patriarch of the house of Waldorf-Rose.**  
**_Eleanor Waldorf-Rose_ is the matriarch of the house of Waldorf-Rose.**  
**_Blair _is the daughter of the Waldorf-Roses, and is the story's female protagonist.**  
**_Aaron Rose_ is Blair's step-brother, and the son of Lord Rose.**  
**_Dorota _is Blair's personal attendant and confidante.**  
**_Penelope Shafai, __Hazel Williams_ and _Isabel Coates_ are servants of the Waldorf-Rose household.

**House of Bass  
**_Bart Bass_ is the patriarch of the house of Bass._  
Lily Bass_ is the matriarch of the house of Bass._  
Chuck _is the son of the Basses, and is the story's male protagonist.  
_Serena van der Woodsen_ is the ruling princess of Manhattan.**  
**_Eric van der Woodsen_**, **step-brother and friend of Chuck.  
_Nate _is a friend of Chuck.**  
**_Dan _and _Jenny Humphrey_ are servants of the Bass household.

**Others  
**_Gossip Girl_ composes a prologue to each of the first two acts.  
_Lord Marcus_ wishes to marry Blair.

**Prologue**

_"Two households, both alike in dignity,  
In fair Manhattan, where we lay our scene,"  
_

Good morning, Upper East Siders! Gossip Girl here: your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite.

Top story on my page? Looks like Big Bad Bart should have remembered his first lesson in Business 101, _caveat emptor,_ before purchasing a little property we all know and love, _The New York Palace Hotel_ (I know, right?!). It was meant to be the sparkling jewel in his crown of corporate realty, and earned him everything you'd think a man could want: the most beautiful over-forty socialite in New York (and I mean that as the highest compliment, L) as a wife, the golden princess S as his lovely step-daughter, and our favorite one-man gay pride parade as an easy in with all those finicky Greenwich Village votes (nice work, E), and officially the largest real estate empire in the world.

So why were his grapes so sour at the annual Bass brunch?

Cyrus Rose—the man who funded Bass Industries' first property endeavor years and years ago, for those of you who don't read _Forbes_—and his lovely wife, Lady Eleanor Waldorf-Rose, _turned down his invitation!_ And get this—Lord Rose did not send the Basses an invite to Lady Eleanor's masquerade ball! Why, you ask? Reliable sources tell yours truly _someone_ encroached on a contract they agreed to years ago, the details of which are just coming to light thanks to a very helpful e-mail I received from a blocked address at 3 AM this morning.

Remember all those meetings between the two patriarchs at the Waldorf-Astoria—hand shaking, Armani suits, tea, the whole shebang? Looks like they agreed any business deals made below 59th were fair game as long as Barty cut Cyrus in on the contract. Guess who's name _didn't _come up when Old Bartholomew met with The Palace's previous owners last Thursday?

It's all out war between the Waldorf-Roses and Bass Industries; I wouldn't want to be a pawn on that chessboard!

SPOTTED: Penelope, Hazel, and Isabel giving the Bass family's latest charity projects a dressing-down at Saks Fifth Avenue. This is the SECOND TIME in one week they've come to public blows. Here's hoping Princess S doesn't catch them disturbing the quiet of our streets again or they'll be punished for sure!

Until next time, you know you love me.

XOXO **Gossip Girl**

_"The which if you with patient eyes attend,  
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."_


	2. Act 1, Scene 1

**A/N:** Spurred on by your reviews, I have clearly decided to move ahead! So, awesome. All right, now that we're getting into the actual story, I just want to say that this _draws_ heavily from Romeo and Juliet, but won't follow its events to the letter. Certain motivations will be different, as well as other things that will be obvious as they happen. Thanks so much for your feedback.

Disclaimer: See previous chapter. Basically, **NOTHING IS MINE!** If you recognize it from Gossip Girl or William Shakespeare, it does not belong to me. I'm merely taking the characters of both worlds, meshing them together with a few new twists and turns along the way, and seeing how things turn out. Chuck paraphrases a certain Sebastian Valmont in this installment.

**Act 1, Scene 1**  
Manhattan. A public place.

___"_Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!  
O any thing, of nothing first create!  
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!  
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!___"_

Hello, Upper East Siders! Gossip Girl here: your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite.

Top story on my page? Tonight, the great rich Lord and Lady Waldorf-Rose are holding the society event of the year. A fair assembly: Mister Baizen and his wife and son; also in attendance are Poppy Lifton, whose RSVP was confirmed just two hours ago, and the recently-released-from-rehab Georgina Sparks. Cyrus Rose's feud with Bass family has put Princess S in a very awkward position, and she will be present with her little brother E to talk peace with the Lord and Lady.

If you be not of the House of Bass, come and crush a cup of wine!

(Except you, G, no need to pull a Lohan until you've got us all good and lulled into a false sense of security, right?)

SPOTTED: Two handmaidens headed to Bendel's to pick up a few essentials for Lady B. Oopsie—did no one tell them Little J is meeting Princess S there for her final gown fitting? If cab W-R leaves 1136 5th Ave. for Henri Bendel at 3:46 PM traveling at 35mph, and cab VdB leaves 300 E 55th St. for the same location at 3:50 PM traveling at 40mph, at what time will their occupants meet and engage in a civil brawl worthy of all tomorrow's headlines?

You know you love me!

XOXO **Gossip Girl**

- 4:17 PM -

Penelope and Hazel handed the sales clerk the black credit card Lord Rose had given them 'for the explicit purpose of running errands for my step-daughter—if any item shows up on my monthly fee statement that Blair cannot vouch for, you both will go home to find a very airtight eviction notice beneath padlocks on your front doors.'

It was no secret that Lord Rose had power over every court judge in Manhattan, and could very easily make good on his threat. So, they let Blair's maid Dorota keep the shiny card in a safe only she knew the combination to, and only asked her to open it when their lady gave them shopping assignments.

As there were only a few short hours until the beginning of her mother's masquerade ball, B had told them to pick up her one-of-a-kind gilded mask, handcrafted feathered headpiece, and custom-dyed kitten heels; their orders were to collect these items as expeditiously as possible, then return to the Waldorf-Rose penthouse by 5 PM with Hazel in tow, to assist Dorota in getting their lady ready.

Chief on their minds, however, was not fighting afternoon traffic to reach their deadline on time. Instead, they were exchanging rapid text messages with their neutrally-aligned friends Nelly Yuki and Kati Farkas about how dreadful the Bass family's newest charity cases were.

Daniel and Jennifer Humphrey, aka Lonely Boy and Little J according to _Gossip Girl_, aka Dan and Jenny to everyone else, had been close to Lily van der Woodsen before she married real estate mogul Bart Bass, and had been lucky to receive positions in his good favor. Dan had been able to publish a few short stories and a series of poems in _The New Yorker_, thanks to the family's backing; and though Jenny's prize _had_ been an internship with Eleanor Waldorf-Rose's house of designs, upon Bart Bass's cold-hearted betrayal of the Waldorf-Rose family, her privilege had been immediately revoked. Now, she escorted the people's unanimous princess and keeper-of-the-peace, Serena van der Woodsen, on petty errands around the city.

The day before, Penelope and Hazel had been walking through Saks Fifth Avenue with Isabel, laden with some shopping for Lady Blair, when they had nearly collided with the lowly Bass cronies. Jenny had been the very definition of a vicious hellcat, spurting untruths about their lady and insulting her family's authority to withdraw an invitation to the most powerfully rich family in Manhattan. Penelope, Isabel, and Hazel, furious at such slanderous public speech at the expense of their benevolent Lord and Lady, had shot back with harsh but true statements about the _nouveau riche_ Basses only being as influential as they were _because_ of the Waldorf-Roses.

Princess Serena had interceded before it could get out of hand, but Penelope and Hazel were still steaming mad at the memory.

"We can't let them humiliate B's parents like that," Is insisted, not for the first time that day, "It's crappy and ungrateful."

"I know," Penelope agreed, adjusting her silver headband as the clerk rang up their purchases. "People will think we've gone soft."

"I mean it, Pen," Hazel crossed her arms and glared at no one in particular, though in her mind's eye the daggers were directed at Dan and Jenny, wherever they happened to be. "If they do one more thing to piss me off, I'm totally going to let them have it. I have dirt on Little J Gossip Girl wouldn't _believe_."

Penelope took the procured black-and-white striped bag when it was handed over the counter and tucked the black credit card away in her purse before the temptation to purchase a particularly stunning scarf overwhelmed her. "Maybe you should focus on keeping _yourself_ out of Gossip Girl before you start trying to dish on other people's private lives. Or _don't_ you remember that investment banker at PJ Clarke's?"

"Not the point, P!" Hazel put her hands on her hips, her cell phone clutched in her right fist. "I'll do it, if they piss me off again."

"This drama is between Lord Rose and Bart Bass; we just help out when Dorota is too busy to leave the penthouse." Penelope slid the handles of Lady Blair's shopping over her arm and let the weight of the bag sit in the crook of her elbow. "We _don't_ need to get involved and tarnish Lady B's name by acting totally upper middle class."

"True," Hazel mused over the Humphreys' economic standing, and felt a lot better. "You're right."

Her phone buzzed in her hand at the same time Penelope's went off in her purse. "It's probably Is wondering where we are."

"No," Penelope held out her screen for Hazel to read. "It's Gossip Girl."

Hazel scanned the SPOTTED! update and saw the news just as the door to the store opened and the littlest Humphrey made her way into the main part of the store. A saleslady bade her welcome, casting a nervous glance at her manager when she realized there were members of both the houses Bass and Waldorf-Rose in their shop at the same time. Two civil brawls had been attributed to them over the short course of one week – the manager could only hope the princess would arrive early for her final gown fitting and prevent a third.

"Don't start anything," Penelope warned Hazel in an undertone, eyes trained on the oblivious Jenny Humphrey. "Let _her_ start it so we can pin everything on her, if the princess shows up. B will _totally_ let us splurge with the card, and you can get that Marc Jacobs bag you've been begging your dad to buy you!"

"What'll you get?" Hazel stared coldly at Jenny.

"The Mui Mui coat." Penelope shrugged and checked her inbox for new text messages.

"I'll glare at her!" Hazel decided triumphantly, glad she could put her daggers to use. "If she doesn't respond, we'll send a blast to Gossip Girl about how the Bass family only employs the company of pathetic weaklings...or, like, something like that. Good?"

Penelope nodded. "Good."

So, when Little J strolled in their direction to wait by the dressing rooms, Hazel shot her a venomous glare and sneered at the tacky peasant shoes on her feet—after all, who wore Converse All-Stars in public and _didn't_ expect to be laughed at? The bottle blonde skank _so totally and completely_ deserved it and anything else they could fling at her, especially after her cruel betrayal of Lady Eleanor.

"Oh my god," Jenny rolled her eyes. "Will you ever grow up?"

"Will you ever stop being a low class tramp?" Penelope eyed her grungy ensemble with blatant distaste.

"You know I'm meeting S here in ten minutes, right?" Jenny ran her fingers through her fried, choppy locks. "You know what she said."

"We're not fighting," Penelope informed their Lord and Lady's enemy. "And you started it, anyway."

Jenny shook her head, obviously annoyed. "Whatever. If you're done here, you should clear out."

"What are you going to do?" Hazel challenged. "Throw us out the door yourself?"

Little J pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and waved it in front of them tauntingly, finger poised over the button that would take her to her archive of personal pictures. "I'll text Gossip Girl and make sure the whole city knows that you two made out at Nate Archibald's birthday party. And, just for the sake of correctness, I'll make sure to forward all those pics I snapped before you two realized what I was doing."

Hazel's eyes narrowed even more and she opened her own phone to compose an e-mail to , herself. "Don't _even_ mess with me today, Little J. I've got stuff on you that will make those pictures look like they were taken at Nate's _fifth_ birthday party. And you know I do."

Before Penelope could draw her own cell and make a similar threat, the door opened again to admit the princess's little brother Eric. He strode between the merchandise to come between them all, separating Jenny from Hazel and Penelope and taking the brunt of any feelings of loathing that sprang back and forth between their slitted eyes.

"Guys, break it up, all right? Put your phones away. We don't need another scene like yesterday in the papers."

Jenny put up her hands and gave her friend an innocent look. "I'm only defending myself. They started it."

"What_ever_!" Hazel stepped forward, but didn't try to go around Eric, who stuck his arm out to keep her at bay. "You talked to us!"

"You _glared_ at me."

"You deserved it."

"Oh, _please._"

The conversation gained steam as the girls stood on their tiptoes to speak over Eric's shoulders. "Just because you're a low class traitor who _happens_ to be his sister's lapdog doesn't mean you can disrespect your superiors, you ungrateful little –"

"Un_grateful_?" Jenny clenched her jaw and threw her hands up in the air in disbelief. "What did your precious Lady B ever do for _me_, other than treat me like her glorified slave and lord it over me at every turn?"

Hazel shrieked with laughter as Penelope _did_ step around Eric and moved into Jenny's personal Brooklyn-ized space. "You think we didn't have to earn our ranks too? You were such a nightmare, you're lucky she even kept you on as long as she did! Then, how do you repay her?" Penelope moved closer and breathed a rude scoff right in the cheap wannabe-dressmaker's face. "You align yourself with her family's mortal enemies _the first chance_ it looks like you'll have a straight, easy rise to the top."

"Well, guess what?" Hazel smirked, "We're not going to make it easy on you."

Eric pulled Penelope away from Jenny just as the latter pulled back her hand in preparation for a slap.

"Hey!" Serena, known city-wide for her golden smile and easy peace-loving manner, had arrived without any of them noticing. They had been too wrapped up in their verbal sparring match to pay much attention to the further comings-and-goings of Henri Bendel's patrons, even ones as important as their princess. "This is the _third time_ this week I've caught you guys screaming at each other! This is _not_ how we should be acting if we want everything to go back to normal."

"Things will never be normal again, S," Hazel said, calming down in the tall blonde's willowy presence. "You know that."

Serena crossed her arms and stared them all down. "I mean it, _all _of you," her eyes landed on Jenny, who crossed her own arms—not in defiance, but in acceptance. "Keep this up and Cyrus won't even _want_ to talk to me tonight. He's only letting me speak in Bart's defense because of Aaron, and you know how he feels about all this hostility."

Hazel and Penelope deflated, but kept their chins high. "Fine, we'll go. But keep your girl in line."

"Her _girl –" _Jenny began, but Serena shook her head silently and walked with her to the dressing rooms.

Outside, Isabel was seated impatiently in a yellow taxicab, waiting for the other two handmaidens. "Finally! B is getting cranky."

In the top suite of the Milan condos on E 55th St., Lily Bass sat in front of a panoramic view of Manhattan with a cup of tea, behind a table laden with paperwork. She had not intended to go over it until the following evening, because up until very recently her social calendar had dictated she attend Lady Eleanor Waldorf-Rose's masquerade ball with her husband Bart that night. Owing to recent events, she was resigned to stay in and look over a few proposals the board wanted to pitch Bart at their next meeting; she thought she would do her new husband a favor and weed out the more ludicrous ideas in favor of showing him those he would be most interested in.

All in all, she felt to blame for the rift between him and his good friend, Lord Cyrus Rose. A misunderstanding had resulted in the ultimate professional slight against the man who had, more or less, given her husband every earthly possession he had claim to, and the Waldorf-Roses would not allow them a chance to explain. Thankfully, Serena remained a friend to the Lord and Lady's daughter, Blair, and had been able to maintain her invitation to the ball—she had also been able to convince her old friend Aaron to allow her an audience with Lord Cyrus after dinner to plead the Bass family's case.

As she was debating between two rather similar plans to expand the company's holdings in London, her cell phone went off and informed her that Eric was trying to contact her. Lily sighed in relief—all the small print was a strain on her eyes—and pressed _accept_. "Hello, sweetie. What's going on?"

"It happened again, mom," he said immediately, with no fanfare, and she knew exactly what he meant.

"Oh, no," she removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose to alleviate an oncoming headache. "Will it hurt our chances?"

"Serena warned them to stop, but the ball can't start soon enough."

Lily nodded silently, knowing Eric could sense her movement even from Bendel's. "Chuck didn't come with you, did he?"

"No," Eric answered, and she felt hugely relieved at that. Chuck was hot-tempered and on edge lately, and his presence at yet another civil brawl could only mean it would soon explode no matter how much Serena tried to douse its flames. "He's in his suite at The Palace, sulking as usual."

Her step-son had locked himself almost exclusively in suite 1812 for days, shutting the windows and closing the curtains to keep out any hint of light that might stir him from his irregular slumber, turning on his lamps when it was too dark to see, and filling the entire hotel with ill-tempered vibes that only put Bart in an even worse mood with him than usual. Lily only hoped that whatever was bothering Chuck so fiercely would be remedied with the upcoming reconciliation between the two old families, but seriously doubted whether or not that had much to do with it.

"Do you know what's wrong with him?" she wondered, thinking perhaps he had confided in Eric one dark evening.

"No." Lily's heart sank at this. "He won't tell me anything. Have you asked him?"

"I did, a few days ago, but he wouldn't tell me either. He won't say a word to Bart, even when he does come over for dinner." Lily frowned, pausing to sip her tea and absorb its calming aroma before she continued. "Of course, Bart says he just gets like this every once in a while, but I'm not certain... This feels different."

"I agree," Eric said, and she heard the sound of traffic that meant he had stepped outside. "I'll call Nate."

Nate Archibald had been Chuck Bass's best friend since before kindergarten, when The Captain had attended a meeting with Bart and left his son with the au pair to keep the young Bass heir entertained. Chuck had bragged about his many expensive toys in an attempt to stake his claim as the dominant four-year-old, an action to which Nate had responded with a simple shrug before he asked to play with the electric train. Ever since that day, they had been nearly inseparable—they attended parties in each other's company, supported each other's every endeavor, and stuck up for each other when the need arose. They confided their secrets the way any teenage male might, while playing video games or downing $1000 shots of alcohol in privileged sections of exclusive nightclubs.

So, when Nate stepped into suite 1812 early that slowly darkening orange evening, he knew whatever was bothering Chuck would shortly thereafter be just another footnote in his archive of Bass knowledge.

Without bothering to knock, he opened Chuck's chamber door and shut it behind him. The darkness that pervaded the large, expertly decorated bedroom lightened in accordance with his rapidly blinking eyes after just one minute of adjustment, and he was able to make out the two lumps beneath cool Egyptian cotton that meant his best friend was not alone.

"Chuck," he called, picking up a discarded pillow and throwing it at what he assumed was Chuck's head. "Wake up, man, its after 6."

A groan was his answer as Chuck shifted on his mattress and pulled his bedclothes over his head. "That early?"

"Early?"

Nate laughed and flicked the light on in blatant disregard for a certain red-haired bed partner's urgent protests. She managed to cover herself with her crumpled clothes and rushed to the adjacent bathroom to dress, but not before Nate was able to take a good, ungentlemanly look at Chuck's latest conquest. "Nice."

Chuck shrugged and rubbed his hand through his already gravity-defying hair. "She was all right."

Nate raised his eyebrows and flopped onto his usual spot on the bedroom couch. "Just all right? She looked more than all right to me."

"She likes to talk _a lot_," Chuck pulled on his pajama bottoms and stretched as he got to his feet. "I'm tired of these insipid Manhattan debutantes. Nothing excites them anymore, not even the impressive sight of me, naked and lavishing them with attention."

"I'll take your disturbing and very unwelcome word on that last thing," Nate put his hands behind his head and looked at his best friend through the gaps in his fringe. "So, what's up?"

"Sorry?" Chuck pulled a shirt over his head and moved to his mirror to comb his hair. "Is something supposed to be up?"

"Nope."

Nate knew better than to push Chuck when he did not want to be prodded. He would reveal his sorrow, in time, and most probably under the influence of alcohol. That was why Nate had agreed to Eric van der Woodsen's request, but also why he had risked Eric's neck in asking him to procure him an extra invitation to the Waldorf-Roses' ball. He was obliged to attend, per his mother's request and his mild friendly acquaintance with the Lord and Lady's beautiful daughter Blair, not to mention Serena's incessant pestering that he _had_ to go or she would never forgive him. So, if Lily wanted to know her step-son's grievances that night, Nate would need him at the ball with him.

Luckily, it was a masquerade, and they could conceal Chuck's very recognizable face behind some disguise or another.

"So, want to go to a party tonight?"

Chuck glanced at him in his mirror's reflection and smirked. "What are you suggesting, Nathaniel?"

Nate reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew two invitations. "Still got that devil outfit?"

Chuck smirked. "You have to ask?"

___"__Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!  
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!  
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.____"_


	3. Act 1, Scene 2

**Act 1, Scene 2**  
The Waldorf-Rose penthouse.

_"__Younger than she are happy mothers made.__"_

Marcus Beaton considered himself an honorable gentleman, at home in the company of kings and fine ladies. Therefore, his meeting with the infamous Lord Cyrus Rose was something he had anticipated with just an ounce of apprehension and not one smidgen of fear. The apprehension was only a trickle in the back of his head, caused merely by the rapid beating in his heart when he recalled his one memory of the lovely Waldorf girl.

She had been ill and bound to her tower bedroom for an entire year; the only visitors allowed in the privacy of her inner chamber had been her mother and step-father, her doting step-brother Aaron Rose, and the doctor that had visited bi-weekly and provided her the care she direly needed to get well. Upon her release from her dark, depressing prison, her mother had invited a select few gentlemen suitors to the roof of their penthouse apartment for an open-air garden party, complete with rich orchestral string music and the aroma of a spring day in his native English countryside.

That one recollection he had of her quiet beauty was precious, stored in the back of his head where that apprehensive trickle dripped; and he recalled the gentle curl of her dark, sunless locks that fell across the slight, lily-white bones of her delicate shoulders. He wanted only to take care of her, to ensure she never grew so ill and hid her splendor from the world ever again. He would never lock her up and bind her to him only, but would show her to everyone and let them admire the exquisite loveliness in the wide, chocolate circles of her silent eyes.

She was, he had noticed almost straight away, a calculating little thing. Her perch on the garden bench had never been abandoned; instead, either her personal maid, a Polish woman named Dorota, had brought her food or drink, or she had been attended to by a steady stream of male admirers.

Marcus had approached her just once, to introduce himself and place an adoring kiss on the frail bones of her porcelain knuckles.

Her eyes had gazed upon him, but he had only seen the wheels turning behind them. She would be an impressive wife, would Lady Blair Beaton.

Lord Cyrus Rose offered him a light for his cigar, and the two of them gazed out one of the wide living room windows at the majesty of Manhattan's prestigious Upper East Side; his future step-father-in-law was half-dressed in his masquerade clothes, while Marcus stood in his finely crafted knight's suit, with his matching helmet of a mask pushed to the top of his head to allow for unobstructed sight. He wanted to gaze upon Blair's full beauty when she descended the grand winding staircase and lit his life with her mere nearness.

"What is your answer to my request, sir?" Marcus was nothing if not polite, even while holding a glass of Lord Rose's best port.

Cyrus's bald head glinted when he moved it beneath the fading sunlight.

"I can only tell you what I've already told you. Blair is still just so _young_, not even seventeen. And she has only recently recovered from her...illness." He cleared his throat and took a small sip of wine and looked a bit red in the cheeks for so early in the evening. Marcus wondered how many glasses his good wife had let him consume so many hours before the ball.

"Let's wait until she's blown out a few more birthday candles before we start assuming she's ready to get married."

Marcus frowned, displeased to hear this pronouncement a second time. "My mother married my father when she was sixteen."

"Blair is not ready to be a wife," Cyrus shook his head again, fatherly sternness stiffening his mouth. "But if you can convince her to love you, then I will have no choice but to give you my blessing. Of course," the Lord Rose chuckled at what Marcus assumed would be a private joke, until he straightened up and looked up at him with an amused glint in his eyes, "tonight you'll have a host of young dance partners—perhaps you won't hold Blair in such high regard once you've seen what else Manhattan has to offer."

"Nonsense," Lady Eleanor Waldorf-Rose appeared suddenly at her husband's back, adorned in the full scope of the ball gown she had designed and sewn herself, and pressed a kiss to his round, bald head. "Blair is the loveliest girl in New York City. No one could possibly compare, and I'm sure Lord Marcus agrees."

Marcus was quick to nod his accord, and Lady Eleanor smiled her pleasure.

"Speaking of my daughter, where on earth is she?"

Dorota bustled into the room, holding a stack of towels in her arms and peering from behind them. "She still in bathroom, milady, sitting in bathtub with bulldog puppy and soaking in soap bubbles."

"Dorota," Lady Eleanor's voice was sharp and hard, "you know it's inappropriate to speak of these things in mixed company."

For his part, Marcus was not complaining at the mental visual. "It's quite all right, milady."

The Lady kissed her Lord once again, this time on the cheek, before bidding both him and their house guest to prepare for the soon-to-arrive guests, and ascending the stairs with Dorota at her heels. When they reached her daughter's empty blue bedroom, she made her way to the closed and tightly secured bathroom she had been telling Dorota to unlock for over an hour.

"Blair!" she rapped her knuckles hard on the white wood and listened for a response. When there was none, she knocked firmly again and tried unsuccessfully to turn the locked handle. "Blair Cornelia Waldorf, you get out of that bath right now and come get dressed—we don't have a lot of time."

She heard a heavy sigh, and then the splashing of water that meant Blair had finally assented and left the bathtub. Dorota hurried around the room, putting things away and pulling the golden mask, soft black feathers, and personalized kitten heels from the depths of the black-and-white striped shopping bag Penelope, Isabel, and Hazel had so dutifully left at the bedroom door before Blair sent them away. They had intended to stay at the penthouse and assist Dorota in Blair's masquerade preparations, but something had driven Lady Eleanor's daughter to extreme melancholy and she would not be pulled from it.

The bathroom door opened and Blair appeared, her dark hair hanging loosely down her back in slick, wet curls. Dorota promptly grabbed a brush and moved to the slightly cluttered vanity table that sat against the wall beside Blair's queen-size bed; instead of going to sit in front of the mirror, Lady Eleanor's daughter wrapped her fluffy white robe around her small, withering body and walked towards her bedroom window to gaze at the rapidly reddening sunset.

"Miss Blair?" Dorota attempted, holding the brush between her palms hopefully as her charge turned her back on them both. "Lord Marcus downstairs to see you. Don't you want to meet him before other guests arrive?"

Another sigh escaped Blair's lips, this one much softer and feeble. "No, I don't."

"Blair!" Lady Eleanor balanced herself on the edge of her daughter's unmade bed and frowned.

"Darling, he's asked Cyrus for your hand in marriage. You're young, beautiful, _healthy_," she stressed the last with a glance back at the maid, who nodded her relief, "you're never going to be thinner or happier than you are right now, and here comes a handsome, eligible, rich Lord from England to whisk you off your feet and carry you into the horizon. What do you say to that?"

Blair had often dreamed of a white knight on a valiant steed to rescue her from her ivory tower, to show her the truth she knew lay just beyond the stone walls her family had built around her. He would be kind to her, and lavish her with love and attention, which to her sheltered mind meant presents and words of affection whispered tenderly against the shell of her ear.

But, then she had heard tales of her good friend Princess Serena's jovial exploits in the city. She supped among other people, among people their own age who did not prescribe so strictly to protocol and manners and gentility, but who _lived_ and did not care what anyone said about it.

Lord Marcus Beaton would not hide her away, that was true, but he would not let her out of her cage_, _either.

She could not feel an ounce of happiness at the thought of his hand taking hers in the sacred marriage vow.

"It is an honor," she said to her reflection. At her mother's happy intake of breath, she added, "An honor I don't want."

Lady Eleanor stood abruptly and almost ripped the hem of her elaborate dress. "You have _always_ wanted exactly this. What's so terrible about Lord Marcus? He is going to _propose_ to you." Blair felt her mother's hands encircle her shoulders, and shivered at the contact. Her fingers were the bars of a prison cell. "With a horse and carriage, a ring from Tiffany's, and your favorite glass of champagne if you make your wishes known to him tonight."

Dorota moved a few steps closer, waving the hairbrush around excitedly, "He is _so handsome_, Miss Blair! Like Michelangelo sculpt him!"

Of course he was handsome—he was intelligent, and sophisticated, and luxuriously wealthy. He was also repressed and boring.

"Give him a chance tonight, darling," Blair allowed her mother to turn her in her arms, allowed her fingers to caress her chin, allowed herself to believe her mother really only wanted her to be wed because it was the best thing for her. It wasn't her mother's fault, after all, that she was a member of the elite old money society that upheld antiquated rules of propriety and decorum. "Look at him and see how much he can offer you. When you become Lady Beaton, _every woman_ in the city will be envious of you!"

Blair knew everyone was _already_ jealous of her. She was the pale, porcelain doll in the locked castle.

"Tell me," Eleanor stroked Blair's cheek the way she had done when she was a little girl. "Will you say yes to him?"

The silence that followed this inquiry would have been 'of course I will, mother' to anyone but the abominable force that was Lady Waldorf-Rose.

Blair drew in a breath and strained to produce a faint smile, "I will give him a chance, mother. All right?"

Eleanor beamed her guarded smile, and led Blair to the vanity so that she would be ready in time to greet the guests when they arrived—on the arm of Lord Marcus Beaton, God willing and heaven permitting. Before she left, she gave her daughter one last kiss on the forehead, pressed it deep into her soul, and left her to her adoring maid and to her private thoughts.

Her dark hair dried and shone like Chinese silk beneath even the dim light of her chamber, and Dorota prattled on and on about how lucky she was to be so young and cherished and to have caught the attention of such a fine suitor. She pulled the laces on the black corset that bound her charge's ribs and sucked in her already tiny waist within an inch of her life, so her slim hips seemed more apt to bear Lord Beaton many sons to inherit his family's legacy.

She swept her hair into an intricate and romantic updo of cascading curls, into which she tucked the black feathers that went so well with the midnight pitch of her flattering ball gown, helped her into her shoes, and rolled the black stockings up her thighs and secured them tight with ribboned garters.

Blair dismissed her and finished donning the elbow-length gloves and fine jewelry; she took one look at the hints of pastel doll-like makeup on her face, and immediately dove into her drawer for dark, smoky eyeliner and eyelash blackening mascara to complement the blood red lipstick she smeared slowly across her full, pouting lips.

Her mother would not be pleased; nor, likely, would Lord Marcus. But Blair felt somewhere, in the depth of her heart, that someone _would _be pleased. And whoever that person was and wherever he came from, whatever he did for a living, she wanted to meet him and let him treat her how she wanted to be treated.

Not like a ceramic doll, but like a real, flesh-and-blood woman.

"_No more deep will I endart mine eye  
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly._"


	4. Act 1, Scene 3

**Act 1, Scene 3  
**A street.

_"My mind misgives  
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"_

Chuck twirled his illicit invitation to the Waldorf-Rose masquerade ball between deft fingertips as he leaned impatiently against the wall of 1136 5th Ave. He was bored and tired of waiting for the rest of Nathaniel's party to join them at the front doors.

His angular face was hidden well behind a literal devil's mask, beneath which only the sharp line of his well-defined jaw that peaked beneath his ear and might easily give him away should anyone look very closely.

"Give me a light," he demanded of his nearby step-brother. "I don't feel like partying."

Eric fished in his pockets for a Zippo lighter, but Nate held out an arm to stop him. "Come on, Chuck, you _live _for partying. Do you know how many girls in there are going to be practically _giving it_ away? Pretty girls in pretty dresses?"

His closest friend and confidant grinned broadly from under his own Phantom of the Opera mask and though he could only see one of his eyes, Chuck felt sure he winked at him from underneath the lamppost. "Masks make them lose all their stuffy inhibitions."

"I told you," Chuck drawled, frustrated internally that his friend just could not comprehend what he meant—did he have to spell everything out, all the time? "I'm over those girls. I think I'll wait until tourist season."

At Eric and Nate's loud guffaws, he narrowed his eyes and self-importantly adjusted his bowtie so it laid just-so crooked under his collar. "I don't care how uninhibited they are. I've most likely slept with all of them anyway."

"Not all of them," Eric muttered under his laughter, but Chuck ignored him. His little step-brother underestimated the truth behind his reputation.

It was said by many in Manhattan that Chuck had a new willing and beautiful girl in his suite every week; this rumor was only half-true. Usually, it was one _or more_ girls in his suite, all at once, every single night. And not just in his suite, but in his bed—willing, yes, and beautiful, of course. But it was more than enough sinful excitement, and he was so much the toast of every eligible bachelor on the Upper East Side that Chuck was utterly and completely over it.

He used to enjoy the parties and opium dens, obviously couldn't complain about the hordes of girls who fell into his lap and hoped to be the one to tame his wild, wandering heart; he knew none of them ever could. They were all the same; unimaginatively attractive, all with the same body that moved the same way under his hands. He needed something different, constant newness and biting stimulation from a worthy opponent to keep him on his toes, and no one he had yet met even remotely came close to fitting that bill.

Chuck Bass was not looking for love, but he was looking for something. Something more.

"Man, be honest," Nathaniel was saying, crossing his strong arms over his broad chest and frowning. "What's up with you?"

"You mean well, Nathaniel," Chuck drawled dispassionately, almost to himself, but loud enough for his companions to hear. "I thought it would be an adrenaline rush, breaking their rules and defying everyone's expectations by coming here." He shook his head and turned an annoyed gaze on the brilliantly lit windows at the top of the building.

"But then I thought, of course I'm not defying everyone's expectations. What they _expect_ me to do gate-crash and wreak havoc on their 'innocent' little girls. They even expect me to come as the devil, because that's what I am to them."

Eric looked at him with raised eyebrows, and held out the Zippo lighter he had found in his breast pocket. "What's wrong with that?"

"It's _boring,_" Chuck griped, swiping the lighter and nimbly igniting the joint he'd tucked into his trousers.

The smoke crawled sumptuously slow up his nostrils, curled in the crevices of his eyes and burned overwhelmingly; allowed him to close his eyes and breathe in the full warm and heady delight of that dark summer night. "It's everything I've done at some other party in some other building in this godforsaken city a hundred times before. There's no challenge in it."

"And what would be a challenge?" Nathaniel inquired, pushing himself away from the lamp and closer to his friend.

Chuck released a cloud of smoke and hummed lightly. "I had a dream last night."

Nate pushed his mask away from his face and showed off his perfectly straight teeth. "So did I."

A scowl grasped the edges of Chuck's lips and yanked them down around his hand-rolled cigarette. "Well, what was your dream?"

"My dream told _me_," Nate leaned in and plucked the joint from between Chuck's lips to put it between his own. "That dreamers often lie."

"In bed," Chuck acquiesced with a prickly scoff, "while they dream about the truth."

"Oh," another slow waft of smoke joined the first above their heads and polluted their air, "then I see you've slept with Queen Mab."

Chuck blinked, wondering if perhaps had scored some particularly strong weed and they were already very stoned. He couldn't recall ever bedding a Queen, especially one named something so unattractive as 'Mab', and realized the full depth of his dilemma—he had become the man his father had been in the years immediately following Misty Bass's untimely death. It had somehow not been clear to him, before that very moment amidst the pungent odor of marijuana and with his best friend's face swimming out of focus in front of him.

"...Who?"

Nate laughed and crushed the perfectly good joint under his heel.

"Never mind. Come on, the others aren't coming and we're too late for dinner."

The three men banded together and slunk through the glass doors of 1136 5th Ave., which stood imposingly above them in stonework and old world brick, like a castle tower transplanted piece-by-piece from some ancestral manor in a mythical countryside. Chuck and Eric held up their invitations as proof they belonged inside its gates alongside the readily accepted Nathaniel Archibald—white prince to Serena's golden princess, the valiant son and celebrated knight of the old aristocrats who dominated the northern mansions of the Upper East Side.

He bound old and new together seamlessly, was a relief to those who wanted to believe in righteous good.

Chuck, in his dark red suit, looked at their neighboring reflections in the elevator doors, and grimaced.

"We're getting there too early," he whispered to their mirror images, disagreeing belatedly with his closest friend as a feeling of discomfort bubbled in the back of his throat where long dregs of single-malt whiskey would usually have been dripping a fiery pathway to his stomach by then.

Instead, he was mostly sober and facing the fact that perhaps attending this masquerade ball was a very bad idea; whatever he was looking for, whatever _something more_ was, he would find it in the tower's penthouse apartment, and his life would never be the same.

Nate twisted his personal key in the penthouse lock and their ascent began.

_"But He, that hath the steerage of my course,  
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen."_


	5. Act 1, Scene 4

**Act 1, Scene 4  
**A hall in the Waldorf-Rose house.

"_Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!"_

The three most faithful servants of the Waldorf-Rose household stood in a corner of the room with their masks covering their faces. Beside them were Nelly Yuki and Kati Farkas, both bedecked in periwinkle blue and glancing down at their cell phones every three seconds to see if Gossip Girl would announce the arrival of Chuck Bass, whom they had seen enter the party between Penelope's perennial crush Nathaniel Archibald and Princess Serena's younger brother Eric, and in a red devil mask no less. It was mystifying to them that no one else had seemed to notice that distinct, defined jaw, or the blazing inferno that lit the black spaces of his tempestuous eyes.

The house's diligent maid and attendant, Dorota, bustled around the party offering drinks and snacks to the many guests in all their finery; Lord Cyrus Rose took a goblet of wine from her proffered tray, then stood regally atop the living room's chaise lounge with his mask sliding off his shining red face as he pronounced in a booming, buoyant voice, "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! Mazel tov!" he paused to smile romantically at Lady Eleanor, who rolled her eyes fondly, "Let's _dance_!"

The band struck up a lively tune as the Lord descended from his soapbox to thunderous applause and greeted Princess Serena with a jovial hug. "Serena, Serena," he beamed up at her; the good Lord came to underneath her chin, drawn up to his full height, but she wore heels with her yellow Valentino gown and towered over him like an Amazon. Her gentle, tinkling laugh and warm, familial hug set her apart from that fearsome image, which served her purpose well.

She had come to talk peace.

On the other side of the room, confined in sinister shards of shadow beside Eric, Chuck saw through the parting crowd of dancers to a pale girl dressed all in black. Her midnight hair fell effortlessly in gentle waves upon her neck, which was bare and milky white in the light of the moonbeam she danced in; he saw only her harlot red lips contrasted so wickedly against her bone china skin, wanted to see the face that hid behind plated gold and mocked him from afar.

There was something familiar in her demure smile; something he had imagined once before...

"Who's that girl?" He asked his step-brother, confident he would know the answer. "Dancing with the knight?"

So trained were Chuck's eyes on the dark-haired flower, he did not see the hesitation in Eric's face. "I don't know. It _is_ a masquerade, after all."

Chuck had been with hundreds—very likely thousands—of women in his young life. He had beheld beauty, seen its true form and shape, heard its voice honey-soft in his ear in the midst of heavy breathing and delicious sweat-drenched skin. There had been more than one maiden to deliver herself, a virgin sacrifice, to the pleasures of his bed; but never had he seen one so breathtakingly pure, so delicate, so untouched. No man's hand had ever rested against the pounding of her heart; no mouth had ever tasted the sweet red forbidden fruit that was so unapologetically displayed on the bow of her plump lips.

He saw her dancing with another man, but she moved like she was alone. Alone in a room full of strangers.

Chuck Bass saw her and he wanted her.

And Chuck Bass _always_ got what he wanted.

Near him, Serena nursed a festive cup of wine with the man she almost thought of as a second grandfather. The tiny golden hairs on her arms prickled at the low, forbidden voice rumbling within range of her ears because it was the voice of her dastardly step-brother, come to rouse up trouble when her main goal was to hearten peace. As the Princess knew, he was very much loathed not only by those whom in the 5th Avenue penthouse resided, but by many of their supporters in the streets, who for some reason pinned all manners of violent peace breaking on him.

And, she knew Aaron was in a corner somewhere, ready to loathe any peasant who may invade his father's celebration and mock his noble wishes with their upper middle class candor.

"What's the matter, my dear?" Cyrus found her displeasure, a wintry thundercloud in the middle of springtime revelry. "You don't look happy."

"It's nothing," she managed the sunny smile that often earned her praise for illuminating the entire city. Her teeth clenched to control the volume of her statement. "What do you think, milord? Can you be convinced to meet with my step-father and discuss a way to end all of this hostility?"

Lord Cyrus crinkled his brow and peered carefully into her eyes. "Is he willing to renegotiate his contract with The Palace?"

Serena hesitated, fingers sore around the stem of her glass. "No." At Cyrus's angry look, she pressed on, "But he _is_ willing to renegotiate his contract with _you._"

She saw the machinations behind his carefully drawn face, but she did not receive her answer, for her worst fear came true. Aaron Rose, her friend and the man who had made her meeting with Lord Cyrus possible in the first place, had spotted her brazen step-brother and stepped between them to inform his father of the intrusion. "That man in the devil's mask—it's Chuck Bass. He's making you look bad in front of all your guests."

Father turned back to son and laughed, the same barking laugh he often bestowed upon much less serious situations. "Relax, Aaron. He hasn't done anything to deserve that." When he saw how dead-set Aaron was against Chuck Bass's presence in the penthouse, Lord Rose's face hardened uncharacteristically and he took his son by the shoulders to will reason into his very bones. "Just ignore him."

"I can't." Aaron had seen the way he was staring at his step-sister. She was too naïve to know how to resist him. "I won't."

"You _will_," Cyrus' voice was hard as granite and pointed as a newly sharpened razor. "Now have some fun. All right? Why don't you two dance?"

Aaron nodded and Serena moved dutifully to link her arm through his own. But before she could pull him into the thick of the festivities, he cast an insolent glower in Chuck's direction. The only problem was, where previously there had been two men leaning together against the far wall, he saw only the mild Eric van der Woodsen. And when he scanned the party for a sign of his impossible-to-miss costume, his view was obscured by the crush of bodies that populated the penthouse living room.

Chuck had seized his opportunity, and swam through the sea of party goers to where the dark angel stood beside the tall knight. Far from her step-brother's fiery gaze, the devil moved deftly behind the pillar against which she leaned and stood so still to enjoy the entertainment of the evening's hired band. He pressed his back against the cold marble, felt his feet in contact with the black-and-white tile, and knew exactly where she was behind him from the heat that rose in his chest.

As her escort became enchanted by a troupe of acrobatic performers in the center of the room, Chuck slid his arm around the column to touch the silk that bound her tiny hand together; then, without hesitation, he grasped the black glove and pulled it off her arm. There was a soft, girlish intake of breath and he quickly slid his fingers through hers, penetrating the space between them and tugging her from her place to stand nearer to him than to the loathsome knight. He still could not see her face, but he could smell the sweet perfume of her bare neck, could appreciate the swell of her breasts beneath the pitch black of her skintight bodice.

He had never craved to kiss a patch of skin so fiercely in his entire life.

Blair felt something in her core, something warm and slippery that she could not give a name. Then, there was a fluttering against her ribcage, like her heart was beating a tattoo of hummingbird's wings against the inside of her chest. And then came soft fingers grasping roughly at her knuckles, and she was pulled urgently around the column that stood between the penthouse's illuminated living room and its darkened foyer.

"That was a bit rough of me," he said, not in a whisper but a low, criminally slow drawl. "Come closer."

His words were more of an order than a request, but something in her didn't mind so very much. In any other situation, she would have ripped her hand away and demanded that, whoever this vagrant was, he remove himself from her presence at once and never spoil her pretty life with his squalor again. But the slow string music urged her body to welcome his scalding touch, and she obeyed.

"I can make it up to you," he urged her to speak with his dark, slanted brow. When her lips did not part, because she was too busy trying to steady the tremble behind them, his hot breath was on her hand, and then his lips were, and the world went very white and very colorful for one brilliant, electrifying moment. "If you'll let me."

She felt the under silk of her dress against her thighs and realized he had pressed nearer.

"Let you what?" Blair managed to whisper, curious as to how he planned to apologize. Perhaps there would be chocolate involved.

When he spoke, a secretively pleased shiver vibrated up and down her spine. "Let me kiss you."

This was not a request either, and in fact was a demand. She heard it in the steady he breathed against her knuckles.

Men had asked to kiss her before, but she had never felt so powerfully moved to let them.

"Sir..."

She felt the blush paint her cheeks and was glad the mysterious stranger could not see her behind her golden mask. He waited for the rest of her sentence, which was more than any suitor before him had done—all they had wanted to do was get to the next winning point about themselves, about how great a match for her they were, about how beautiful she was, how brilliantly their engagement ring would sparkle on her left hand. She preferred the bewildering silence; she felt like what she said mattered.

"You don't have anything to atone for. We're," Blair cleared her throat and unconsciously tensed her fingers around his.

He squeezed back, more intentionally, and her blush renewed.

"We're only holding hands," she continued, lower than before because Marcus reached for her other hand and clasped it in his own. "You haven't done anything wrong—after all; pilgrims touch the hands of saints, when they go to church and pray."

Her dark companion chuckled low in the back of his throat, and her eyes fluttered closed as she appreciated the rich, smooth sound of it. So there _was_ chocolate involved...

"Don't saints have lips?"

Her eyelashes slowly parted and Blair smiled despite herself, and was very aware of how very sensitive her own lips were to the boisterous, invigorating air. Why had she never noticed how every nerve ending that resided beneath their pale pink folds was easily lit aflame at the mere thought of touching someone else's hot skin?

"Yes, pilgrim," she answered sweetly, her smile turning into a smirk. It was fun to deny him at every turn. "Lips they _pray_ with."

"Well then, _saint_," he nimbly countered her, and a thrill went up her arms as his grip tightened further. "Let lips do what hands do."

"What's that?"

And then her hand slipped out of Lord Marcus's and was suddenly set upon a broad, firm chest, beneath which beat the steady rhythm of a pounding heart. A smell invaded her nostrils, musky and earthy, something not tainted by artificial soaps or colognes. His arm went around her waist and pressed her against his torso, and she felt every part of him against every part of her, but there was no more blood in her left to blush. Instead, Blair paled considerably within this illicit embrace—the man society yearned for her to call fiancé stood not two feet away—and whimpered slightly when the same breath that had blown over her knuckles flowed past her dark red lips and floated slowly down her throat.

He smelled like she imagined a man ought to smell.

"They pray," he shared her every labored breath. "_I'm _praying to kiss you. So grant my prayer."

Blair grappled for something to keep their game alive, something to match or best him with. Never before had she been allowed to engage in an unmonitored conversation that allowed her to use the knowledge she had gleaned from so many hours of reading and learning from books—not the histories or the sciences, but the romances Penelope gifted her and which she kept hidden between her mattresses.

But, she was carved in her place, like a statue of the Virgin Mary or one of the saints they were so hypothetically referring to, and knew deep down that the words in those dime store novellas were not meant for her to live by. So, she sighed regretfully, "Saints don't move. Not even when they grant prayers."

"Then you stay still," he commanded something of her for the third time that night, and for the third time she found it excited her more than it should have. No man had ever _insisted_ she do anything—it was always 'Lady Blair, please do this,' and 'Oh, my beautiful Lady, would you mind if...' and on and on until she was sick and tired of granting their wishes with a sunny smile and a ladylike nod of her ladylike head. This man in the shadows told her to stay still, so she became as rooted to the ground as an ancient oak.

The pyrotechnicians her step-father had hired for the evening chose that moment to release their host of fireworks, and in their bright bursts of white-hot illumination, she saw every sloping curve and dipping jagged valley of his uniquely handsome face. His delicious lips quirked and moved to hers.

"I'll pray..."

When his lips touched hers and he felt her move inexpertly beneath him, Chuck pulled the dark-haired girl closer, turning them both around so he could push her against the sturdy marble pillar that her knight so diligently guarded in the light. In the darkness, her little gasps for air thrilled his very blood as it pumped adrenaline in his veins and sent the old familiar feeling of lust cascading down his torso. But when he pressed against her little body and felt her hips under the layers of silk, chiffon and lace, it wasn't _old_ or _familiar_, and it was the very opposite of _boring_.

She moved differently, because she didn't know how. She wasn't like the other virgins he'd shoved into walls or tasted in the night; she was genuine and pure, was really parting her lips to admit his probing tongue on pure physical instinct and not because it was what she thought he expected her to do.

Something different, he had found. It pervaded his mind and addled his brains, let him know that even though he was in the dark and did not need his full vision, when he did go stumbling back into the light he would be seeing three of everything and it would all be violently bright and better, because he had sucked the blood red lipstick from her mouth and savored the sweet wetness of her tongue against his.

When she moaned, it was soft, and prompted Chuck to stop and admire what little he could see of her.

"Now I've given my sin to you," he jested, watching her pulse beat in her naked throat.

When he saw her pout in the faded light, it was the sexiest pout he had ever seen.

"My lips are covered in your sin?"

Chuck saw that he had tainted her for good, but that she didn't yet know what to do with the stain. He smirked and leaned back in to share her breath, pausing mere centimeters from the dewy morning rose that bloomed in her swollen, sinful lips. By her very nature, her sweet and mocking mouth, she _encouraged_ his crime against her sweet chastity.

"I guess I'll have to take it back," was his next husky decree.

And then, he took it.

She was ready this time, and Blair moved her mouth in measure with his as best she could; he had clearly done this many more times than she ever would, probably with many more partners with infinitely more experience, but when he groaned into her she felt it resonate even in her lowest depths and even further below, and somehow she thought he didn't mind her naïveté that much at all.

She smirked against him, feeling like her old self—before the illness, before the suitors, before the pressure of finding a suitable husband to please her loving mother, delight her proud step-father, and fulfill the vicarious expectations of every society matron on the Upper East Side. A time before she fully realized how foolish her childhood fantasies were, before she had come to the conclusion that there was no man to take her into the world and show her the raw gratification that came from not only being in the world, but from _living_ in it.

The devil pulled away, and she smirked wider. It was obvious he had done a great deal of living. "Did you go to a special kissing school for billionaire playboys, or something?"

She saw him grin back at her, was eagerly awaiting his retort when there was an affronted 'ahem' from their left, and she turned to find her faithful nurse Dorota standing beside them. Her hands were on her hips, her mouth was set in a severely straight line that read _'God always watching, Miss Blair'_, and the stony disapproval on her normally affectionate and smiling face made Blair gulp slightly in guilt.

But it felt _so good_ to feel guilty; she couldn't help but stay in the stranger's arms.

"Miss," Dorota snarled protectively at the boy damaging her precious charge's purity, "your mother is looking for you."

The dark angel looked up at him for a brief moment, and then she moved back into the light and out of his world.

Chuck watched the crowd swallow her whole, but saw the top of her feathered hair above the other masks. "Who is her mother?"

The maid stopped in her tracks, for she had been moving away, and snarled at him again. He merely stared evenly at her, thoroughly not intimidated by her oddly territorial overprotectiveness; all he wanted to know was where that heavenly creature came from, where she got those lips, and that _voice_ that made him want to peel the dress slowly off her lily-white skin and tenderly kiss every inch of it as it became exposed—to claim every part of her as his, and his only...

"Her mother the Lady of the house," said the maid, and Chuck stopped his daydreaming. "She a good Lady, Mr. Bass. I nurse her daughter."

The overprotectiveness made a lot more sense in wake of this statement, as did her expressed loathing for him—she knew exactly who he was and exactly how much he should _not_ be standing in the Waldorf-Rose foyer with the good family_'_s one and only virginal daughter.

"You go now, sir, before I tell someone what you up to."

Chuck put his hand against the pillar to support his weight, and lifted the devil's mask off his brow. "She's a Waldorf?"

The maid nodded shortly, and then followed the path his dark angel had taken.

From around her came Eric, then Nathaniel, both unmasked and grinning ignorantly at him.

"Come on," said Eric, clapping Chuck's shoulder and pulling him away from the fateful pillar. "We're leaving in style."

Chuck followed listlessly, allowed his step-brother and best friend to steer him towards the waiting elevator that would deliver him from the house of his father's enemies, the house of those who held his life in their very hands; every bone in his body was aware of how much trouble had had just landed himself in.

They joined the line streaming steadily between the shining doors, which caught her reflection in a distorted band of gold and he remembered suddenly where he had imagined that demure smile before._ Dreamers often lie in bed while they dream about the truth._ No, he had never been with a Queen.

Not yet.

As the revelers disbanded, Blair moved to Dorota and hugged her like she had done every night before bed, since she was a small child. Perhaps more out of habit than any remaining motherly affection for her charge, the Polish countess stroked Blair's hair in return and kissed her cheek goodnight. As she tried to move away and clean up the mess the Eleanor Waldorf-Rose's guests had left behind, however, Lady Blair clutched her wrist in a newly strengthened iron grip and held her fast.

"Wait," her voice was soft and modest, a far cry from the throaty tone it had held in the wake of her indiscretions. "Who is that man?"

Dorota bristled and waved to Carter Baizen, whom she knew all too well. "The son and heir of Mister Baizen."

Blair withheld a frustrated growl and restated her question. "The one getting into the elevator with Nate. Who is _he_?"

"Well, that one," Dorota informed her impatiently, "is young Eric."

"Who's the one _with them_?" Blair snapped, annoyed at her nurse's artful dodging. "The one who wouldn't dance?"

"I..." Dorota examined a nonexistent crack in the pristine ceiling. "I don't know his name."

"Dorota." Blair clenched her fingers tighter around the maid's arm and knitted her dark eyebrows together over the crackling lightning that bit behind her eyes. "You know I hate secrets more than anything."

Her nurse looked at her, sadly and sympathetically and judgmentally, though Blair understood none of these emotions. She understood only that something was being kept from her, something vitally important to her very survival in the world—if she did not find out the name of that darkly handsome devil who had kissed her and awakened feelings latent in her stomach she never would have discovered otherwise... It was hours until she could command her minions to discover his identity for her! If she did not know his name _that instant_, could not let its beautiful syllables caress her lips in a breathy whisper, she felt she would shrivel up and die at the lack of knowledge.

"His name is Chuck," said Dorota quite suddenly and very ruthlessly. "He's a Bass. The only son of the man who betrayed your step-father."

Blair's heart dropped to her knees and fell silent. That name could never pass smoothly over her tongue.

_"For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."_


	6. Prologue II

**Prologue II**

"_Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,  
And young affection gapes to be his heir."_

Good morning, Upper East Siders. _Early_ morning, that is. If you_'_re awake and checking Gossip Girl at this hour, then you know the drill; the Waldorf-Rose masquerade ball has, sadly, come to an end. But! Take heart, for I bear you good tidings of great gossip, direct from one of my most reliable sources: a vaguely sober attendee and their very crystal clear streaming video, linked below!

Word is, C crashed the party after dinner and quickly set his sights on our beloved Lady B, who is rumored to be entertaining a marriage proposal from British hunk, Lord Marcus Beaton. From what I've heard of a steamy kiss hidden behind a conveniently placed marble column, Lady B's done entertaining boys and is ready to get down to business with a real man! One whose reputation, incidentally, dictates she _should_ be avoiding at all costs...

I guess Lady B has layers we haven't even begun to peel away. And you know what they say about a bad girl masquerading as a good one... ;) You know I'm loving this! Here we thought C would never do anything to surprise us ever again, and he comes out _swinging_!

But is our Lady of Divine Solitude in way over her head, here? After all, C is known mostly for his activities after dark, a time we've heard B is usually safely tucked away in her ivory tower.

Is this just another one of his notorious bedpost conquests, or is C prepared to prescribe to a strictly enforced curfew and abstain from that one physical activity that doesn't require the removal of his signature scarf? (We hear it was chilly.)

Happy fishing, Waldorf. Good luck catching yourself a Bass.

XOXO **Gossip Girl**

"_But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,  
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet."_


	7. Act 2, Scene 1

**Act 2, Scene 1**  
A bedroom in the Waldorf-Rose household.

"_Can I go forward when my heart is here?"_

Her miserable face was the last thing Chuck saw before the elevator door slid shut.

The golden **P** above their heads slowly faded out and gave way to numbers that represented hollow floors with empty halls and deserted rooms for ghostly shells of people—hollow, empty, and deserted, they walked forever without a purpose, because Chuck felt with some sort of ethereal certainty (from the profound way his heart was beating a hole in the cavern of his chest) that the _only _destination worth reaching was the warm and silky embrace of her porcelain skin wrapped uncertainly but willingly around him and pulling them so flush against each other that it was impossible to be certain where his one-of-a-kind black dress shirt ended and the dark lace of her bodice began.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes against the blinding, almost fluorescent light in the elevator. With every taunting little _ding_ that signaled the rapidity of their descent, he was painfully aware of just how quickly she was slipping away from him.

But, he was insane to think he could ever reel her back in. His dark and mysterious angel, with the witty mind and the beautifully quirked eyebrows and the ruby red lips, was more off-limits than even the wealthy Republican Senatorial candidate's very talented triplets or the influential French dignitary's pale white and flaxen blonde daughter.

The moment his lips had melted against hers, he had as good as signed his death warrant.

Blair Waldorf was every bit the enigma old folk tales were made of. For over a year, she had been confined to her tower bedroom, riddled with some unnamed illness that had kept her name and freshly ripened flower of a face gleaming from the glossy folds of every northeastern society magazine, and even a few western European ones. That was, perhaps, how the British Lord Marcus Beaton had first learned about the woman Lady Eleanor Waldorf-Rose was so keen to have him call his bride.

_Blair Beaton_. He had only known her for less than fifteen minutes, and the thought already made him ill.

Had _he_ ever touched her as Chuck had? He had seen them dancing quite properly to a stuffy waltz, but she had moved so singularly and independently of his stretching and searching hands, that she had seemed to be in the room with no one but herself. Had their lips ever met like two cords of white-hot fire? They had hardly touched hands the entire evening.

No matter what her domineering mother or her meddling maid (who had impeccably awful timing) or any of the little vultures she called friends said or thought or wanted, Chuck Bass had more of a claim over their virginal 'Lady B' after several feverish embraces than her refuted fiancé had after weeks of dutiful courtship.

The doors opened and Nathaniel clapped him heartily on the back as Eric pulled them both into the rapidly crowding front lobby. Chuck glanced at both of them and saw from the familiar glaze in his best friend's eyes that he had managed to procure his favorite poison from his favorite apothecary, who had undoubtedly also snuck into the party with an ill-acquired invitation and tainted the feast with his designer wares. Eric was not under any influence but his own good will, which worked better in Chuck's favor. His step-brother was somehow even more perceptive after a few glasses of red wine.

He made his decision without one more wasteful thought of consequences or the fallacies of his cynical mind.

"Nathaniel," Chuck drawled convincingly. "Give me your keys. There's no way you can drive."

Nate looked as though he very much wanted to argue, but then something more interesting caught his fancy and he chuckled. The keys he pulled from his pocket all dangled from one chain—there were sharp little brass ones which presumably opened specific doors in the Archibald household, jagged silver ones friends and admirers had bestowed upon him as tokens of entry into their domains, and several specific circular ones that opened penthouses up and down the island of Manhattan. The one Chuck wanted had the letters _W_ and _R_ engraved on its head in ornate curls and loops.

"Here, man."

Chuck snatched the offering out of his friend's proffered hand and immediately disappeared into the massive crush of people.

Blair knew that, at some point, Dorota had taken advantage of her dazed immobility and led her up the curving staircase to her tranquil, blue bedroom. Judging from the facts that her hair had been released from its pinned and coiffed prison and was free to dangle loosely around her bare shoulders, that her shoulders were _bare_ and her lifelong companion had utilized her usual discretion and gentleness in undressing her and replacing her evening garments with a pale yellow silk nightgown, and that she smelled perfumed and felt scrubbed clean, she had been in her little tower for quite some time.

The rooms beneath her feet were still, presumably because the staff had completed their duties and the Waldorf-Rose home was exactly as it had been before the joyous festivities. Any lingering wine stains would be remedied by Dorota's special and mysterious concoctions the following morning, when Blair would sit down for a quiet breakfast with her mother, step-father, and step-brother. They would enjoy freshly picked fruit and pulp-free orange juice while Cyrus sipped specially-mixed Brazilian coffee straight from a carafe and her mother enjoyed a perfunctory sip from a well-hidden wine snifter.

And if Blair was very, _very_ lucky, Lord Marcus Beaton would be far away, enjoying his breakfast in England with the queen or his staff of unsmiling guards, or whatever it was he did at his estate in London. She hoped desperately to never find out first-hand.

Her mother had urged her not six hours before to consider his outstretched hand in marriage, but as hard as Blair had tried to smile at his charming accent, the attractive upsweep of his ash blond hair, and the delightful crinkle around his eyes when he smiled down at her with his rows and rows of bright and straight and perfectly pearly white teeth, she could not think of marrying him. A title and all its amenities were nothing if she was not in love.

As a little girl, she had thrilled to the enchanting fairytales her father had read to her from the pages of old and worn and much-beloved volumes, and when she sat on the edge of her window seat and stared unseeingly at the gleaming vastness of her empty kingdom, Blair found herself wishing desperately that her father would hear her plight from across the glittering ocean and return to her.

She pressed her white forehead against the cool, unmoving glass, and sighed. Her breath stained the chocolate box view much like her mother's insistence on Lord Marcus fogged every wish and hope she had ever dared to dream about her future.

"So, this is your bed?"

The reflection in her window slammed into focus, and in between the white pinpricks in the velvet blue sky she saw the candlelit face of the only man she had ever kissed. Her lips, now pale and pink and a little dry around the edges and slightly cracked in the middle, pulled together in a pucker that seemed to reach out towards him. _Come closer, please, come closer._

"You're Chuck Bass." It escaped her in one absurd breath. The name was much easier to whisper than she had thought.

His fingers, as deft and sure as they had been on the buttons of her bodice and against the frayed nerves of her shuddering skin, traced nonsensical patterns on the silken bedcovers that adorned her queen-size bed. They seemed to write everything he had ever done with a woman, everything he could do and probably wanted to do with her, possibly right then, quite obviously right where he pressed his palm against the sheets and let it linger.

A ghost traced those same patterns on the small of her back. Blair blamed the wind.

"I can be whoever you want me to be," he stepped into a shaft of moonlight, and smirked beguilingly. "But yes. I'm Chuck Bass."

The array of questions she should have asked—_Who let you in here? What makes you think you can be here? (It's highly, highly inappropriate, and my reputation will be utterly tarnished.) Where did you really learn to kiss like that and would you please teach me some more? (No, no, no, no, no.) Where did you get that candle, by the way? (Someone's going to miss it and figure out you're in here.) Why _are_ you in here? How did you _get_ in here?_—festered in her brain as she reached for her charmeuse dressing gown.

Instead, she did what seemed to come naturally whenever she spoke to him.

She made something up.

"What if I want you to be Lord Marcus?"

Her fingers stumbled and slipped on the knot she was trying to tie, and with a remarkable swiftness Blair thought must have been what had led him to her—both at the party behind the pillar, and then in the dark silver shadows of her private bedroom—he strode across the distance between them and did up her robe for her. He left his hand pressed against her bellybutton, and a swarm of heat bloomed rose red across her torso.

Then, all she could see were his dark eyes as they drilled into her own and all she could feel was his hand as it swept around her waist in a slow, deliberate drag, and came to rest where the phantom trills of his fingers still danced. Blair was freshly pomaded and ready for someone to tuck her tired body in-between the cool embrace of her bed sheets.

Chuck smelled like cigar smoke, alcohol she could not put a name to because her mother forbid her to even look at it, much less consume it, and a raw cologne that pressed against her senses like a heavy hammer, the oppressive heat of a mid-July day, the vibrating hum of a song played at too high a volume...

"You don't."

She really, really didn't.

Chuck grasped the mellifluous cloth that flowed like a slow-moving stream across her back and rippled it in his hand. She was exposed in front of him, a little ivory statue with long and natural lashes underneath half-moon networks of pale and beautiful veins. He licked his lips, and then swept his tongue across the chapped cliff that jutted out so dangerously above the sweet curved stroke of her tremulous chin.

He felt her start to pull away, but when she put her hands against his chest to act as the wedge that would drive them apart, he acted with the swiftness his experience afforded him and grasped them between his own. Before she could struggle too adamantly and spoil the sumptuous symphony of her quick little breaths and uncontrollable sighs that reached crescendo in time with the pounding of her hummingbird heart, Chuck smoothed his mouth around her bottom lip and drew her into a slow, floating high the likes of which all of Nate's best apothecaries could not provide.

He managed to keep her between him and the window for several torturously long moments, before she finally seemed to remember her modesty and successfully drew away. Chuck did not move to stop her or pull her back, but let his fingers drip away from hers one by one and watched the dark silhouette of her curves in the glowing radiance that streamed through her windowpanes.

"You should go," she muttered, her words obscured by her fingertips on her lips. "You should really go."

Chuck slid the robe he himself had tied in place off her left shoulder and ran his palm down to her fingers, which instinctively curled around his own as he slid their embraced hands back up the length of her stomach, over the sweet swell of her unbound breast, to rest on the pulse point just atop her clavicle.

Blair arched her head back when he nipped her earlobe and whispered, "You can't tell me Bertie Wooster is satisfying your needs."

"You forget who you're talking to."

She spun around to play the proper virgin, but the devil still held her hand in his grip and he was not letting go. "So do you."

"How did you get in here?" Blair finally asked, the curiosity burning behind her eyes like a bonfire built of puzzlement.

Chuck tugged on her hand and pulled her to fall against his chest. "I used a key, Waldorf."

"Why didn't anyone see you?" She frowned and he held his candle up so the flame danced and cast shadows across her lovely, bare neck.

"They didn't want to." He sucked a gust of breath from her mouth and stole another invasively deep kiss. "Act happy to see me."

Blair hated cliché's, but there was no way to describe the way she was feeling except to say that her head was spinning; his proximity tensed all her red alerts, but the fact that he had procured a way to defy everything that was logical and right in the universe to sneak through her house and overrun the sanctity of her childhood bedroom set the romantic giggle in her heartbeat aflutter. The most romantic thing Marcus had ever done was press a chaste kiss to her knuckles and tell her she was more beautiful than any of the precious flowers that decorated her rooftop retreat.

Empty words, empty touches, empty smiles.

Everything from Chuck Bass was ablaze and thrumming with some inaudible melody. _Touch me, touch me, please, touch me._

She was a proper lady who sat demurely in sunlit rooms for tea and finger sandwiches with distinguished matrons of the upper echelons of society. There were whispers that The Colony Club wanted to induct her as their youngest ever member as soon as the leaves in Rhode Island turned red and gold and she was allowed to walk the streets with the dazzling Beaton engagement diamond weighing down her ring finger.

_Outwardly, she was everything a well brought up girl should be._

Inside, she wanted his hands on her every second of every day because then, she wasn't who everyone knew she was; she wasn't a doll, or a lady, or a prize to be auctioned off to the highest, most eligible bidder. When he touched her and she felt the guilty rush throbbing in her stomach, Blair Waldorf was just the passionate young woman The Colony Club and her ladies-in-waiting and the society pages did not want her to be. The innocence everyone else prized so highly scalded and offended and clawed inside her in a desperate attempt to be freed.

Nothing in all her years of debutante training and dainty lace doilies and girlish satin headbands permitted Chuck Bass to get within ten feet of her. Everything she had ever learned from books and tutors curled her fingers within his and screamed at her to push him away and scream for someone to save her from the fiery temptation she could smell on his skin.

"I don't know you," she protested. How could she be happy to see someone she did not know?

That smirk that looked so very at home on his perfectly angled face grew dim, but in its darkness it was somehow more intense.

"But you want to."

And with that, Lady Blair could not argue.

But she heard footsteps in the hall outside, her mother going downstairs to arrange begonias or fret over hydrangeas and make up a to-do list ten miles long that Dorota would be expected to complete the following day, or perhaps Cyrus on his way to make an important business call in the private study at the end of the hall. It was even possible that Aaron had decided to make use of his guest bedroom and was passing by her closed door on a quest for a glass of water.

Whoever it was, whatever they were on their way to do, they reminded her that she and Chuck Bass were not the only two people in the universe. It was true, the thought of getting to know him, seeing what other kinds of feelings he could inspire to crack the veneer of her porcelain shell, was a very appealing one—even more appealing than blue boxes tied with white ribbons or an army of loyal servants dedicated to carrying out her intricate social plots without question. But however they would come to know each other, it could not be in her penthouse in the early hours of the morning with so many of her family members on guard to protect her virtue.

They would have to meet another time, somewhere no one would think to look for her.

Chuck Bass seemed to think much as she did, for he extinguished the candle with one gust of breath and bent down to whisper again into the keen shell of her ear. She felt his finger tracing a line across her collarbone, and realized he had pinched a bit of wax from the candlestick and was spreading it like a seal into the dip of her throat.

"Tomorrow night at nine," he murmured in that prayerful voice she remembered him using just before their first kiss. "I'll send a limo for you."

"They'll never let me out on my own." Blair again proved she was a fast learner and rounded her blushing lips against his neck as she spoke. She heard him exhale and glanced up to see that his eyes were clenched shut and his mouth was set in a relaxed, but very intentional thin line of concentration. "The doctors haven't said I'm allowed to be unsupervised."

Her newest suitor, if one could call him such a tender thing, peeked at her from under his eyelids and saw her culpable frown. Without the candle to illuminate their tête-à-tête, her face seemed to shine like the polished depths of a cultured pearl. With her dressing gown dripping off her yielding body and her chocolate curls tumbling around her serene face like a dark halo, he thought she looked like a morsel of dessert fit for him to top with whipped cream and devour.

He could only imagine (and hope that he would see) what she looked like when that supple skin glowed after the sweet release of the passion she was so sheltered from. It beat against her bones like a caged bird aching to soar into the blazing sun, and he could see the tell-tale signs that a forbidden fruit was soon to be ripe for the plucking.

"You'll think of something."

Chuck nudged her chin like he had seen Humphrey Bogart do in an old black-and-white film and slipped from her embrace without another word.

"_Turn back, dull earth, and find thy center out."_


	8. Act 2, Scene 2

**Act 2, Scene 2**  
A room in the Bass house.

_"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift."_

Lily was quite shocked when Charles came strolling through the doors and into what she perfunctorily thought of as 'the family room', even though no two members of what the press had affectionately dubbed the conjoined Van der Bass family were ever in it at the same time. Barring a charity affair or a small dinner party, Bart was generally to be found hard at work in his office, Serena had an obligation to be social and be seen out and about in the city, Eric was busy acquainting Jennifer Humphrey with the inner workings of high society life, and Charles...

Well, Charles preferred to stay out all night and sleep all day in his private suite at The Palace, where he could come and go as he pleased with only unheeded reprimands from the concierge to bother him.

Of late, her new stepson had taken his life of debauchery and parental disregard to new heights, and he rarely if ever bothered to attend the consecrated 'family dinner' night she and Bart had instituted immediately after returning from their honeymoon. She had not heard a word about him since the day before, when her son Eric had enlisted the aid of Charles's best friend Nate Archibald to yank him out of the affectation of melancholy he had been wallowing in.

"Charles," she put down her morning cup of tea and eyed his appearance. He was wearing a rumpled red suit that matched the disarray of his usually neatly styled hair. There were bags under his eyes, an unlit cigarette dangling between his fingers, and a disturbingly cheerful smile stretching his normally ominous features into the very portrait of youthful happiness.

What on _earth_ drugs had he been taking?

"You're here very early."

Chuck tossed the unlit cigarette across her one-of-a-kind Regency antique table and, because there was no better word to use for what he did, _flopped_ across one of the long couches and sprawled out like a lazy cat bathing in the summer sun.

The fact that he had not been to bed that night was not a particularly rare occurrence—she had often read of his exploits in the society pages: all-night drinking binges in bars he bought on the spot in order to keep them from closing and ending his fun, parties at clubs that reeked of designer drugs and $10,000 bottles of liquor, mornings when the cleaning staff would enter suite 1812 to find quadruplets in various states of sated undress in his bed. He had earned his reputation through a faithful and committed maintenance of everything that lent itself to scandalized columns in rag magazines or internet websites written by cell phone voyeurs.

But one thing Lily knew about Charles was that he came to her when he had important news and no one trustworthy to share it with. The condo was empty as he had known it would be at such an hour, and the staff would not dare interrupt their private conversation unless it was a matter of life or death. He grinned beguilingly at her and she instantly reached for another sip of her blissfully hot tea.

"What happened to you last night? I can see you haven't slept."

Chuck put his hands behind his head and a more recognizable look settled across his lips when he smirked. "I enjoyed sweeter rest than sleep."

"Oh, Charles." Lily sighed heavily and rubbed her temple in slow, soothing circles. "Whose daughter have you deflowered this time?"

"Nobody's," he replied swiftly, and the smug and secretive tone of it chased her every disappointment away.

"That's good, I am glad to hear it." She swept her eyes across the creases and wrinkles in his appearance and raised an eyebrow. "Then where _have_ you been? Eric sent Nate to fetch you."

Chuck let out a low, humorless chuckle and set up straight to cross one leg over the opposite knee. "I was fetched."

When he did not elaborate on his own, Lily resigned herself to serving as his provocateur and folded her hands calmly across her cream Chanel skirt. "And where did he take you after he caught you in mid-air and wagged his tail in victory?"

Her stepson, pleased as he was with her silent agreement to play along with whatever unspoken game he wanted to play, hopped up from the couch and moved suddenly to take the cushion beside hers and sling his arm casually over her shoulders. "You're not going to believe this, but _I_ have been feasting with my enemy."

Lily's eyes snapped to his to confirm that he was saying what she thought he was saying. The consequences of his attending the Waldorf-Rose masquerade could be more far-reaching than his one-track mind could possibly comprehend; if he had been seen, or if he had caused dissention in the guests, Lord Rose might not have paid attention to Serena's well-rehearsed and incredibly important speech about "the importance of lasting partnerships and conditional understanding when things could not be made to work according to a preconceived plan". She, herself, had written it for her daughter, and was anticipating a reconciliatory phone call from Lady Eleanor, and a renewed invite to her garden party along with it.

Did the drugs Charles was clearly on have anything to do with his news? If he had smuggled an apothecary under Lord Cyrus Rose's roof...

"Tell me plainly, Charles," she prayed silently that his answer would be of peace and good will. She prayed to every unlikely god who very probably no longer opened their ears to the delinquent at her side. "What have you done?"

"I've met someone," her stepson continued, with a glint in his eyes that belonged to a man whose every desire had landed in his lap. "No, not a call girl at a late-night bar or another insipid debutante."

"Then who?" Lily supposed she ought to have heeded the heavy rock of lead that settled in the pit of her roiling stomach when she dared to ask for clarification, but a tiny and very convincing voice whispered in her ear that it would be better in the long run if she learned this mysterious person's identity sooner rather than later.

She watched his face for some sign of who he might be speaking of—another Senator's daughter, perhaps? God forbid he had found himself enthralled by the vestal virgin of some austere priest or a strict private school headmaster's innocent little princess. Lily did not think she could stand to hear the phone ringing off the hook when whoever it was called to bemoan her broken heart when he moved onto his next conquest. Someone would have to be notified about the upcoming onslaught of call forwarding...

But he did not say any one person's name. Did not wink roguishly and tap her on the head as he left the room with some witty remark that was perhaps meant to lead her on a quest to find his latest victim's identity. Charles merely smiled evasively, removed his arm from around her shoulders, and stood to brush off his seemingly ruined suit.

"It's not time yet," he informed her finally, after he was satisfied it was salvageable. "It won't be any fun if you know right away."

"Charles." Lily felt the creases forming in her brow and frowned at her stepson as he made to leave. "Tell me. Who is she?"

"A lady," he answered. Then, he scoffed and amended, "No, not a lady."

Something about that word seemed to amuse him, and she watched as he turned it over and over again in his brain, undoubtedly picking it apart to find every digestible meaning so that he could invent one no one would be able to stomach. Charles had an uncanny habit of taking the best of things, the most promising and richest possibilities, and turning them to dust with one wave of his hand (in which was usually clutched a glass of ancient Scotch). It had been done to plenty of hopeful young ladies, besotted by his dangerous good looks and the fact that he could produce for them whatever they desired whenever they wished for it.

What did he have in store for this poor girl?

Had he already robbed her of her innocence? Was that why he could so effortlessly strip her of her title?

He leaned down and kissed Lily on the cheek. "She is a queen."

The minutes ticked by after his abrupt departure; he had gone unannounced, just as he had come. They would not sit at the breakfast table and share a pitcher of orange juice while he filled her in on the finer points of his conquest before Eric came down the stairs and he was forced to change the topic to avoid incurring her wrath.

This time, it was different. He was not only keeping a secret, but he was keeping it seemingly for the plain enjoyment of making sure no one knew his mind. This meant, to Lily anyway, that whomever he had set his sights on this time was someone he should have known to stay away from. Who she was, what her name was, what she had done to pique her stepson's wanton interest, she did not know.

When Eric came down for breakfast, she would tell him to inform Nathaniel of this development. Then, she would leave it to them to handle. The matters of the young were not really her concern, and she had more pressing matters to attend to.

_"__Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.__"_


	9. Act 2, Scene 3

_"Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great;"_

**Act 2, Scene 3**  
A clearing.

Pale beams of emerging sunlight filtered through the thick grove of sycamores like warning pinpricks: night was retreating from Central Park – stars were disappearing unseen above all of Manhattan, twinkling in vain as they mourned the fierce competition from flashing headlights and sky scraping buildings dripping in neon and flooded with people who forgot their nightly sentinels.

Nathaniel himself often had to be reminded of the moon's glistening companions, often glanced out a window in Connecticut or stared through an oval airplane shutter and was surprised to see them smiling down on him.

Under their weary glow, shaded in the safety and seclusion of his favorite refuge in the city's sprawling exhibit of _Nature at Rest_, he gutted a cigar with a razor blade and viscerally removed its tobacco. He and Eric had separated from Chuck after the conclusion of the Waldorf-Rose masquerade ball and, upon purchasing some cheap cups of coffee and devouring them in several large gulps, found themselves wondering where the devil their best friend/stepbrother had stolen off to.

Not only were they increasingly concerned for his safety, but he held the keys to Nate's cherry red Ferrari.

To pass the time, they turned up the ringers on their cellular phones and retreated into the comfortable darkness of an old secret haunt to share a hearty breakfast of cannabis (for Nathaniel) and cherry danishes (for Eric) and several more paper cups of bitter black brew.

"Where the hell is he?" Nate paused to lick the outside of the cigar, and rolled the brown paper carefully over its new contents. "Are you sure he didn't go back to the Palace?"

Eric shook his head and glanced down at his phone's dormant touchscreen. "Not according to Vanya."

Between the two of them, Eric knew he and Nate had already left Chuck at least seven voice mails inquiring after his whereabouts. The staff at the Palace swore up and down that he had not come through their front _or_ service entrances, and several maids and bellhops had knocked on 1812's locked door to make sure he had not somehow evaded their security's attentions. Either Chuck had stolen Nate's Ferrari for a joyride with whatever willing strumpet he had happened across, or he had gone to the new condo his father and Eric's mother, Lily, had just finished decorating for their new family.

They were willing to believe the second only after they had exhausted every other possibility. Chuck loathed staying with his father.

"There is a note waiting for his return," Eric leaned back on his elbows to passively observe and carefully appreciate the slow death of night. "Delivered by courier from the Waldorf-Roses, on behalf of a man of the house."

Nate looked across the grass at his younger friend, his handsome brow chiseled in concentrated thought. "What business does Cyrus have with Chuck?"

"Perhaps it is not from Lord Cyrus."

Eric puckered his lips together and met Nate's eyes with a certain knowing pity. He had, after all, been a witness to his stepbrother's brash and none-too-subtle actions at the masquerade ball: the person responsible for the streaming video on Gossip Girl's front page had not been the only party-goer to view glimpses of Lady Blair's impropriety. And before he had been foisted into Princess Serena's golden arms, Aaron Rose's face had held nothing but contempt and aggravation at the presence of a red devil darkening his stepmother's heavenly marble nest.

"Then who? Not his son Aaron?" Nate clicked the puzzle pieces together as he fished through the pockets of his discarded coat for an engraved lighter.

"You've heard about the...incidents between Lady Blair's band of followers and Serena's charge, Jenny Humphrey, haven't you?"

The Archibald heir was lost momentarily in a haze of slowly twirling smoke, but when his face emerged surrounded by curling wisps of ephemeral gray tendrils, it was quirked slightly with amusement. "I heard from Serena that they were more along the lines of civil brawls that she was only barely able to keep from exploding into outright social scandals. But yes, I did hear all about them when she took it upon herself to enlighten me yesterday over our customary cup of mid-morning coffee."

For the life of him, Eric could not understand how Nate became more eloquent while under the influence of his apothecary's pricier inoculations. Pricier, he supposed, because they were so swift.

"Did she also tell you that Aaron has had it with the hostility and is prepared to take drastic action against Chuck himself should Gossip Girl report any more incidents?"

A shadow fell over them, darker even than those cast by the canopy of trees.

"Aaron Rose subscribes to Gossip Girl blasts?" Chuck's lips twisted upwards in what could certainly never be called a smile, but rather an impressive affectation. "And here I thought he was too preoccupied selling his overindulgent finger paintings to the ignorant bourgeois."

Nate got over the surprise of Chuck's uncharacteristically abrupt arrival, only to be immediately bowled over by the appearance of his best friend in exactly the same ensemble he had been wearing upon their exit from the Waldorf-Rose penthouse elevator, right down to the steadily worsening haphazardly crooked wrinkle in his dark red trousers.

"Some might call _you_ the ignorant bourgeois," he managed to say, after removing the blunt from its perfectly molded position between his lips and offering it to Chuck in a silent way born from years of such brotherly divvying, "considering your father has asked him to provide artwork for The Palace's executive suites."

Chuck removed his rumpled jacket and dug through its pockets for some jangling object before flinging the whole thing aside aside, rather than accepting the proffered morning treat, much to the intense surprise of his bleary-eyed comrades. Nate and Eric exchanged bewildered looks through the now heavy curtain of smog.

"A pithy attempt at a peace offering." He dangled the set of keys from their yellow, red, white, and green striped chain before tossing them onto Nate's own wadded up jacket.

"What took you so long?" Eric wondered, sweeping his fingers through his hair and wetting the locks with vestiges of the ground's morning dew. "You swiped Nate's keys and vanished for..." he consulted the golden watch on his wrist and raised his eyebrows when he noted the passage of time, "five and a half hours."

"He gave us the slip," Nate accused, and his sapphire eyes held in them the accusation most of Manhattan would attribute to Chuck Bass's nocturnal wanderings. "And stole my damn car to give it to someone else."

Chuck lit a cigarette that had been dangling unused between his fingertips and enjoyed a slow inhalation before he chose to answer. "I apologize for the disappearing act. I had very important business to take care of," a much more convincing representation of what normal people deigned a smile appeared on his dry, chapped, vaguely reddened lips, "it was so important that I had to forget my courtesy and good manners."

At that, the two golden-haired boys snorted in perfect unison. Their friend was known for many things; his reputation spanned the isle of Manhattan, up and down the East Side, across the park to the west, and down the numbered streets and across the tree-lined avenues to the financial district and the lower reaches of urban sprawl, across the East River and Hudson, even to the outer burroughs and the foreign country that was New Jersey. Hardly any of those things involved courtesy in the strictest sense of the word, and none of them could be mistaken for good manners.

"In other words," Nate snickered, "_important business_ didn't revolve the removal of your scarf?"

Eric sucked in a breath to keep from laughing outright. Beside him, Chuck's famous smirk was in full effect. "It wasn't chilly at all this morning."

"Oh, then you _did_ take the scarf off?"

"That's a very..." Chuck took a drag as he considered his vocabulary. "Polite and courteous way to put it."

"Yes," Nate, bolstered by the jolt from his favorite insubstantial breakfast, sat up straight to engage further in their verbal duel. "I'm Nathaniel Archibald, the master of courtesy and manners. The finest company for the blushing pink..._flowers_ you and your inattentive and neglectful manners leave wanting when you slip off into the night with those insipid debutantes you've come to loathe so much."

Chuck eyed the dwindling amount of cannabis left for Nate's greedy consumption and chuckled, a trace of mirth dancing behind his dark eyes. "The pink flowers."

"You heard me, man."

"Well, then, by all means," Chuck exhaled a puff of smoke, curving his lips and blowing just so to form a perfect, wavering ring. "Perhaps you can tutor me in the art of wooing one of your _polite _and _courteous_ pink flowers."

"Give up my valuable trade secrets?" Nate distorted his features, the better to look mock affronted at the very thought. "Not when we're finally having an actual conversation. Isn't this better than your half-conscious whiskey-drenched ramblings about the terrible state of your oh-so-cursed life? I was beginning to think I was going to have to call Carter Baizen and arrange a lost weekend to snap you out of your privileged depression. You were beginning to sound like me."

The cigarette burned itself out in his grasp before Chuck answered, and even then his eyes stared sightlessly past the line of trees at something Eric and Nate could only guess about. "That won't be necessary."

"Are you sure?" Eric had heard the tales from upperclassmen about the debauchery and subsequent self-discovery achievable at one of Carter Baizen's famous lost weekends, though he had never been able to witness or experience the fun for himself. The prospect of gaining admittance to a real festivity not bogged down by adults or propriety sounded like just the thing to really snap his stepbrother out of his self-described rut. "I'm sure mom wouldn't mind me tagging along, if she thought it would make you feel better."

"I've already seen Lily this morning," Chuck said almost so quickly that he nearly stepped on the end of his young stepbrother's well-meaning suggestion. "And she's been assured that my mood has improved."

"What's gotten you so out-of-sorts?" Eric moved into Chuck's field of vision to capture his full attention. "Where _did_ you disappear to?"

Thoughts of the usual opium dens and designer apothecaries filled Eric's imagination, but when he saw those chapped, dry, red lips tugged apart by humored dimples in full cheeks and smoldering purpose in the sharp set of that angular jaw, he realized he could not possibly cobble together an explanation for what had so completely and quickly turn weeks of bitter pulp into instant, flourishing fermented wine. Something tensed in the back of his neck, at the base of his skull, urged him to recall some knowledge he knew he possessed but could not gain access to for the heady weight of a dawning contact high and the desperate need for honest-to-God rest in his very own bed.

"I've got things to do." Chuck planted his feet on the ground and hoisted himself back into a straight-backed standing position. His hands found their way to his jacket, which he swung back over his shoulders and slipped his arms into with one single, fluid motion.

"Are you going to come to dinner tonight?" Eric asked every night, though he always knew the answer.

This time, however, rather than simply saying 'no', or scoffing at the mere suggestion, Chuck cordially shook his head and crushed the cigarette under his heel to ensure its effective death. "I have a meeting with a queen."

He left Nate and Eric as he had found them, alone in the grove of sycamores with only their cups of coffee and the invisible light of the stars to witness their bewildered gazes.

"Do we know any queens?" Eric inquired, at precisely the same second Nate took a final puff from from his blunt and asked, "He has a meeting in Queens?"

_"and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy."_


	10. Act 2, Scene 4

"_Hie to high fortune!"_

**Act 2, Scene 4**  
A room in the Waldorf-Rose household.

It was late in the day, and Blair judged the dwindling of the sun by cast of the cold light on her skin. For all the blood humming in her veins and charging her senses with electricity, it felt like the very break of day, when the world was new again and every little thing she touched was exciting and fresh to the feel. The silks she draped around her body were of various length and color, but each one was modest and chaste – garments she might have felt more at ease in were she sailing on the_ Mayflower _rather than selecting an ensemble for her meeting with the devil_._

Penelope, Isabel, and Hazel were due any moment, and they were to be laden with shopping from the usual places lest they desired to be evicted from the Waldorf-Rose penthouse and never again allowed admittance.

Dorota had bothered her just once with a tray of tea 'for her strength', but that had been hours before, when she had been experimenting with her tendrils of hair and worrying over plaits versus sweeping updos, ceramic flatirons or curling wands, face-framing ringlets or flattering wisps cascading from a smooth center part.

The majority of her afternoon had been spent in solitude, a companion she was used to reveling in, and one whose company was not so unwelcome that day. Her mother's incessant inquiries about Lord Marcus Beaton's charms were quite intolerable no matter how many hours were put between them and the masquerade ball, and anything her stepfather or stepbrother were likely say to her would undoubtedly involve concerned looks and pressure about her diet.

Blair turned sideways to examine her reflection in the full-length mirror. She was clad only in a pearly white slip, but the cut and perfect stitching gave away that it had been specifically made for her. Her thoughts strayed, as they had been doing all day, to the memory of Chuck Bass's eyes raking up and down her body, the way they drank in every dip and curve and hitch of her breath. What would he think if he ever saw her in this?

Even to herself and her inexperienced eyes, she looked the part of a virgin sacrifice.

The door creaked open and she heard the clicking of heels down the hall, which meant her loyal handmaidens had discreetly and efficiently delivered her shopping, just as she had requested. She did not wait long before creeping into the hallway to retrieve the bags, hoping silently that no one would come across her and her telling blood red lips and deduce what she was up to.

Beneath the stylish wrapping and pristine folds of black-and-white striped bags were just what Blair had been hoping for: new pearls to compliment her snow white complexion, kitten heels no one had ever seen strapped around her delicate ankles, and new creams and powders in dark shades to leave no doubt as to her womanhood.

A demure Puritanical dress was her ticket out the door. It was gray and boxy, lifeless and trimmed with black, fell to her knees in an unflattering line, ruffled at the wrists, and covered every ounce of her décolletage. She may as well not have hips or a bosom to offer any interested suitor.

Should anyone see her out on the street that night, it would be as the collected and innocuous angel they and their tabloids had built her up to be. What lay beneath the fabric was secret and for one specific set of dark, penetrating eyes.

Her lips parted in a satisfied smile when she examined her perfect curls, and the careful way she had arranged the knot of her pearls to lie between her breasts. The smoky makeup was like nothing she had ever worn, not even at the masquerade ball where she had felt so bold and rebellious in her black eyeliner and puckered bright red lips.

A darker shade created a taunting bow between her smirking dimples, and a trill in her chest notified her that it was quite dark out, and the limousine Chuck had promised to send would be outside momentarily.

If her plan was going as smoothly as she knew it should, Penelope was waiting downstairs with a change of clothes, so that when her lady departed in secret she could assume the role of the restful, responsible maiden. Should her mother or stepfather or even Dorota peer into her dim blue bedroom to check on her slumber, they would indeed find a dark haired body dreaming peacefully between the sheets, her breath even and quiet underneath silken bedclothes. She had been instructed to sleep lightly, and to pull those covers up above her face as she slept with her back to the chamber door – should a crisis come about, Penelope was to text Blair and request she return home for damage control.

The doctors had not given her leave from the tower penthouse, but despite their warnings and protestations, Lady Blair knew a night out in the neon city was precisely what she needed to feel well. Too long had she seen only the walls of her childhood home, been restricted to enjoy nature by way of paned windows and supervised visits to the rooftop garden. That night, she would begin to truly live in ways she had never done, not even before her sickness had overcome her body and chained her to her bed. Chuck Bass was waiting for her, somewhere in Manhattan, and as the clock struck nine, her body hummed louder, pulled taut her muscles like the chord of a violin waiting to be plucked, and she began the perilous journey to the elevator.

At the top of the stairs, Dorota was waiting with a bundle of linens and a disapproving look.

"My lady, you know you are not well," she said brusquely, and Blair hoped for the sake of Penelope's position as her most prized friend that she had not been seen waiting downstairs.

"I am taking a walk around the building, that is all." The lie was smooth and unrehearsed, because Blair had _not _practiced it – she had honestly counted on leaving the building unseen. "The doctors only said I can't go _out_, but if I stay inside and don't wander too far, I think it will ease some of my restlessness. I'll be back in ten minutes, no need to worry."

But her faithful nursemaid was not to be fooled; the flaw in Lady Blair's plan was not waiting until she was safely in Chuck's limousine to apply her makeup and release her hair from its bun.

"I have to tell Lady Eleanor, and she not be pleased..." Dorota's lips thinned and she clenched her eyes shut in disappointment, which pronounced the deep lines in her forehead and around her kind eyes. "You know how your mother feel about your health, my lady. She want only for you to be better."

Blair frowned and moved closer to the Polish countess, the one woman on the planet she felt she could completely confide in and not worry about what she might say to someone else. "My mother 'want only' for me to be better so she can marry me off to the first soulless pretty face who will have me, so she can foist me off on someone else and let me be their problem. You know I'm right," she touched Dorota's shoulder when the woman showed signs of protesting. "You know if you don't let me go now, the next time I leave this place will be to go to my wedding to a man I don't love, and I will spend the rest of my life shunted from cage to cage. I will _never _be happy."

It was cruel of her, perhaps, to play so heavily on the knowledge that her maid loved her as a daughter and wanted nothing more than her true and utter happiness. The woman had not left her side once in all her young life, had never wavered in her devotion and care; in her dark months of illness, Dorota had brought her soup and cool cloths and read her the fairy stories she had not been able to enjoy since her father's departure for distant France.

The only thing that stood in Dorota's way of letting her young charge be happy was Lady Eleanor Rose, the most terrifying specter in her reality. The woman who would see her fired and deported should she learn that Lady Blair had left the penthouse, and she had done nothing to stop it.

But Blair was so earnest, looked so eager and there were petals in her cheeks, and when she lifted her chin, it was a regal motion that resonated in Dorota's throat and brought forth a choked sob.

"Oh, Lady Blair..." the maid dabbed her eyes with her apron and pursed her lips. "Lord Marcus downstairs to see you, he insist he does not leave until you come down to speak with him."

Excitement turned to despair on the curve of a dime, and Blair's heart plummeted to her covered knees. He was not a bad man, not a bad match for a marriage, nor was he particularly hideous or a terrible conversationalist; he had money, prestige, a title, lands in England, centuries of breeding and impeccable manners.

He stifled her.

The thought of his hands entwined with hers made her fingers twitch, and a cold feeling settled across her chest as she asked herself the only question that made sense in that instant, _"What would Chuck Bass do?"_

The red devil had said she would find some way to him that night, and not a single bone in her body approved of sitting with Lord Marcus and pretending to be interested in his transparent attempts at courtship. His lips were cold and hard and unfeeling, like the adoration behind his eyes when he bowed his head to her or kissed her knuckles.

No fire. No feeling. Nothing for her. He would be good for someone else, someone who was really as innocent as she was supposed to be. Someone who hadn't tasted the dark chocolate of Chuck Bass's lips, or heard the smooth, deep pitches of his voice husky and aroused in the shell of their ear.

It was obvious to her in less than five seconds. What would Chuck Bass do? Exactly what Blair Waldorf would do, and that was get out – no matter what means had to justify the ends.

"Dorota," she whispered tearfully, and the maid drew closer the better to hear. "I will be truthful. I am going to meet Charles Bass, the boy you so deeply disapprove of. I hope that through our meeting, I can mend the discord between his father and my own, and the terrible feuding can cease. It is these terrible disputes between my sweet friends and dear Serena's sweet protégée that are causing me such distress!" Blair dipped her head down and allowed a few well-practiced tears to trickle down her chin and fall into her palms. "I need but to find him, and then I swear upon my honor you will find a well girl sleeping peacefully in my bed."

Five minutes later, when the British prig had been ushered from the penthouse and told to return at a more appropriate time, Lady Blair Waldorf emerged from the front doors of 1136 5th Ave. with a winning smirk on her ruby red lips and a decidedly womanly swing in her high-heeled gait. The night air ruffled her dutifully coiffed locks and tousled them into a rather more attractive state of imperfection, which suited her mood and made her glad she had chosen her undergarments so well.

The black limousine was waiting for her at the curb, and the note inside read only _**Meet me at Victrola**_.

"_Honest Nurse, farewell."_


	11. Act 2, Scene 5

"_Here comes the lady. Oh, so light a foot  
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint."_

**Act 2, Scene 5**  
A nightclub in Manhattan.

He knew the precise moment she stepped out of the cool Manhattan air and into the heady mix of sweat and lipstick that was his precious Victrola. She parted a lingering curtain of heavy cigar smoke and broke the yonder flickering lights of passing cars and neon advertisements that filtered through the doorway.

There was no reflection cast in the eyes of the main stage's most flexible dancers, nor did he catch a strain of her delicate perfume amidst the stink of electrified men and the women who sparked their desire. A hush did not fall over the club when she arrived, nor did anyone bow their heads in honor of her rare and sought after presence. Blair did not call his name; no waitress leaned over the back of his couch to inform him of a pretty young virgin girl asking to see him.

Chuck simply knew she was nearby.

His chest tightened in anticipation of those juicy lips, or of the deep cadence of her voice when she whispered. He had only ever heard her speak in whispers, and wondered if her voice was so alluring when they were not concealed in shadows or lit only by the pale light of the moon. There were heels on the floor behind him and a cord pulled at his fingers when he remembered the curve of her hips beneath the voluminous skirts of her ballgown.

She had found a way out into the world, past the golden bars on her chamber window, around the upbringing that had taught her to be conscientious and responsible. She had taken a ride in a stranger's chariot to serve as his most prized and unexpected gift.

His shoulders tensed and he sat upright in his seat, so overpowering was the sensation of her nearness that he could think only of unwrapping her the way he had the night before. There were rooms in Victrola where they could be alone, or any number of hotels whose bellhops and maids would no sooner breathe a word of his nightly activities than they would be silenced and never seen working in the city again.

Blair Waldorf was, after all, a lady, and it would not due for her to be seen gallivanting around the executive suites with the heir to Bass Industries. It would not due for anyone to recognize her in the club, and he was counting on the fact that no one would dare believe she had lowered herself to thrumming bass beats, corsets, and feather boas over hydrangeas, sparkling champagne, and orchestral string sections.

She was merely a look-a-like. Perhaps an enterprising young girl he would hire to imitate her on one of the poles or behind the bar. But not Lady Blair. _Never _Lady Blair. And certainly never in the company of Chuck Bass.

He had beckoned her down from her lonely tower to his own cavernous lair, and the fact that she had abandoned her overbearing mother, her judgmental nursemaid, her influential step-father, her doting stepbrother all to join _him_ in the shadows once again...

It proved she was everything he had been waiting to find. She was a debutante, but there was nothing insipid about the way she had matched him wit for wit all the while never once arousing the suspicion of her blushing groom to be.

That made the world see her as an angel. He saw her for what she was, a quietly conniving, tragically imprisoned, overtly naïve little girl grappling to take control of her reins as a woman. The tabloids and Gossip Girl and Page Six made the mistake of calling her 'Lady B', but he would soon correct them.

Because he did not intend to measure her back for a set of angel wings. Rather, he intended to have her fitted for a regal crown befitting any rightful Queen of the Upper East Side.

His stepsister Serena was the one who thrived in the sunshine, the unfaltering Princess who prized peace and valued friendship, and forged sturdy alliances with family acquaintances, bartered business dealings that brought everyone joy and fruitfulness. She was of the house of Bass, yet dined freely with Lord Cyrus Rose and danced thoughtlessly, publicly, with his only son. She was the ray of diplomacy that kept her broad and varied circle from disintegrating or imploding. People followed her because she showed mercy and forgiveness, was tactful and things came so very easy to her.

But there were things she could not do, measures she could not take when the need arose. For though she was the pretty face that attended parties and wore fluttering gowns for people to ooh and ahh over when they saw the glossy photographs in over-hyped gossip magazines, she had no real power. There was nothing substantial to her tenuous alliances, only kind white smiles and her sterling record to back up her promises. She was a light-squared Bishop, restrained by her easily won image, resigned to the same patterns of persuasion, hindered by the same roadblocks she could not overcome.

A Queen would not be so restricted.

Blair could traverse light and dark with ease – he could teach her everything he knew about eliminating her enemies, forging shady alliances based on mistrust and born only of necessity and lack of other options, how to instill fear to get the desired results from the expendable pawns... She could make enemies if that was what needed to be done.

Serena was the cover girl for all that was "right", but there were gaps in society she could not fill, actions she could not take for fear of ostracizing the wrong group. From what little he had seen and the abundance he had heard of her, Blair was all about necessary ostracizing. Her months of confinement had cultivate her legend, even as they had hampered her from flourishing and blooming among the living.

If there was something she was sorely missing, it was that which Chuck could freely give to her: unfettered life.

He did not rise from his seat when the dark angel stopped behind him and set her hands familiarly on his shoulder. Her nails dragged slowly across his collarbone, a shaky touch and an uncertain gesture, an unsteady falter that made even his breath hitch. That was when he knew, unequivocally, irrevocably, absolutely knew that she was the woman for him.

She was the _something_ he had been looking for.

"This is where you choose to meet me?" she breathed her inquiry into the shell of his ear, and he moved a hand to cradle her neck and keep her there. Whispers of what they could and would do together caressed his cheek every time she exhaled. "A burlesque club?"

"This is Victrola," he informed her, clutching his glass of perfectly aged Scotch at the sensation of her loosely hanging curls tickling his throat, and shut his eyes to appreciate the intoxicating aroma of her freshly washed skin. A jolt of fire lit his stomach when her arms slid around his shoulders and her fingertips grazed his abdomen. "Where your wildest dreams come true."

Blair pouted – he felt the motion against his cheek, like a shadow of a kiss – and moved around to sit on the plush cushion that adjoined his. "I've never had a wild dream."

"No," Chuck rested his hand on her knee and gave her conservative outfit a once over. "I don't believe you have."

Someone pressed a flute of champagne into her empty hand, and she cupped it to her cheek, enjoying the feeling of something cool against her flesh in the midst of everything she could see and hear going on around her. It was an assault to the senses, being around so many people who did not incline their heads to her passing figure, or break into whispers at the sight of her walking and talking just like a real girl.

It occurred to Blair, as her eyes landed on the mass of corseted bodies writhing against each other on the stage directly in front of her, that perhaps she did not know exactly how a real girl was supposed to move. They contorted and spun hypnotically, moving their hips in ways she had never guessed they could be swayed – like pendulums in the stately grandfather clock in her bedroom hallway.

"You escaped your wardens," Chuck commented from beside her, but she was too entranced to look away from the dancer in the middle, whose rhythmic dips and pelvic grinds were all at once offensive and desirable. She did, however, spare him one unguarded smile to let him know she was listening. "How do you feel?"

"Relieved." Her answer was punctuated by a sip of her bubbly beverage. "I feel relieved."

The middle dancer had caught her lingering gaze, and was now staring intently into Blair's eyes with such focus and heat that an honest to god flush bloomed from underneath the frilly collar of Blair's gray Pilgrim frock. It spread to her cheeks and made the frothing champagne glass only more welcomed against her skin.

The music was a steady beat, rough and unpolished and abrasive. A woman was singing, but Blair could not decipher all of the lyrics over the chattering and catcalling, not to mention the heavy thud each and every one of the speakers leaked from the ceiling. It hummed in her body, a lot like the excitement she had felt in her room when she imagined where Chuck Bass would direct his limousine to take her for their secret rendezvous, and she was reminded of a scene from one of her contraband romance novels.

A woman undercover amidst the lower class to gather important information... forced to doff her clothes and prance around for the pleasure of men and their unblinking eyes.

The woman in the middle of the main stage cluster was in a red corset, and had a blunt haircut that did nothing to flatter her jawline or detract from the fact that her nose was a little too big for her face. The dramatic makeup she had smeared around her eyes and lips and eyebrows only accentuated the comedic tragedies of her unfortunate facial features. But when she threw her head back and stretched her gloved arms to the ceiling, so that the sinewy muscles of her body caught the circles of flickering light, something tore at the pit of Blair's stomach and made her long to arch her stiff and proper back under the watchful gaze of some leering patron.

This was such a new and foreign thought to her, that she almost choked on the champagne she was not drinking. So recently she had considered her undergarments only worthy of Chuck Bass's eyes, but...

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Chuck had leaned back into his casual lounging position and was enjoying the show just as much as she was.

But then his chocolate eyes swiveled to meet her own, took in the radiantly naked glow in her embarrassed expression, and he smirked so easily she thought it looked like someone gliding into a trusted pair of Italian leather loafers.

"You know, I can dance," she told him, a strangled sort of proclamation that she hadn't intended to make. Unfortunately for her, there was a lull in the heavy pounding of the hypnotic song, and her unlikely suitor was able to hear every single world.

"Really?" The stage lights tripped gleefully across his forehead and around his chin and chest, shadowing all of his most mischievous angles. "Then why don't you get up there?"

"No!" She tried to brush him off and be cavalier, with a dainty laugh that exposed more of her straight teeth. "I'm just saying... I _like_ to dance."

The music picked back up again, and both their faces were illuminated in swirling circles, which caught the crinkle between her brows, and the way her cheeks hollowed out as she tried her best to look appalled at the blatant displays of lust and debauchery on the balcony behind her. But the nervous patterns her fingertips subconsciously drew on the dull fabric of her unimaginative skirt, along the tops of her thighs and between her knees, told a different story.

Chuck leaned in and spoke to her in that voice that had haunted her dreams the night before. Silky and smooth but hard and substantial, firm and deep. "You are ten times hotter than any of those girls."

He spoke so frankly that she was abruptly reminded of the first words they had shared at her mother's masquerade, when he had smoothed his rough touch with a gentle kiss and dragged her willingly into his web of reckless abandon and disregard for all semblance of society rules. It was what had initially attracted her to him, aside from the obvious and many appealing physical attributes, and it was what prompted her to bite her lip thoughtfully. She had been called many things before, had been complimented endlessly on the delicacy of her delightful porcelain face... but no one had ever stoked the nerve endings that now seemed to be _everywhere on her body_ and called her "hot". It was such a... _common_ word.

Blair felt an array of emotions briefly crack the paint she had so carefully applied, before she was able to control herself and retreat into the powdered mask of a neutral doll and purse her lips in disapproval. But Chuck, who she had seen observing her lips and licking his own in a thrillingly predatory way, bore down on her in a rush of lips and eyes and luxuriously soft hair and a probing, slick, sharp and clearly talented tongue. It was hot, as he had called her, and...affectionate. Exploratory.

She dipped her own tongue into his mouth on a whim and was surprised and thrilled at the moan it elicited from deep in his throat.

"I know what you're doing, Chuck Bass," she smiled against his mouth, then withdrew to affect a too-little-too-late coquettish shyness. But when his eyes did not leave her face, when she could hear his breathing and feel its results on her temple, when his fingers grasped hers and brought them to that same mouth for feather light pecks along the insides of her bared wrists... She pouted again. "You really don't think I'll go up there."

Men who held prized notions about her courtly place in their patrician futures might have taken that opportunity to leap to her side in hopes of winning over her temperament and gaining access to further compliant conversations. But Chuck Bass, who she could see did his level best to never have notions past what bow tie he planned to knot tomorrow and with what one-of-a-kind silk shirt, leaned closer and bit her bottom lip hard enough to leave a mark.

"I know you won't."

The competitive voice in her head, whose mantra was _Kill Kill Destroy Destroy_, bristled at his declaration and rose up on its haunches at the challenge. She had never danced in public the way she did in her bedroom, when the chamber door was locked and she was allowed to sample songs from Penelope's, Hazel's, or perhaps Kati's much broader playlists – with hundreds on eyes of her, she could do the most complicated Viennese waltz without so much as flinching, so how hard could it be to stand up in a semi-darkness and twist, bend, wiggle, and squirm her way up and down the stage?

Lady Blair took a very unladylike gulp from her champagne flute, set it down with a firm resolve, and got to her feet all in one fluid motion.

"Guard my drink."

And then, she took the stage.

"_A lover may bestride the gossamers_  
_That idles in the wanton summer air,  
And yet not fall. So light is vanity."_


End file.
